Lancashire has asked the government whether it can have, upfront, some of the powers and cash that come with a directly elected mayor – even if the post itself is years away from being created.
It comes after delays to elections for mayors in other parts of the country placed a question mark over when Lancashire might finally get one of its own.
The county appeared to have been on course – political agreement permitting – to see the all-powerful politician installed in May 2027.
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That would have meant the new figurehead was ushered in almost a year ahead of a separate shake-up that will see Lancashire’s 15 main councils abolished and replaced with a handful of new local authorities covering large swathes of the county – a process known as local government reorganisation (LGR).
However, the government’s reason for delaying mayoral elections due in 2026 in four other areas is that they are also seeing their councils streamlined as part of LGR – and it wants to see those changes completed before introducing a mayor.
With Lancashire’s new councils not set to be up and running until April 2028, that stance would seem likely to push any mayoral election back to 2029 at the earliest – and, as Lancashire County Council has requested LGR itself is delayed until 2029 or 2030, it could be the early 2030s before a mayor is in place.
Against that backdrop, the county council’s Reform UK leader, Stephen Atkinson, told a meeting of the Lancashire Combined County Authority on Tuesday (16 December) that he would use a private leaders’ meeting with local government secretary Steve Reed this week to ask whether it would be “possible to passport [mayoral] powers and [any] extra funding to the CCA in the meantime”.
The LCCA – the body established in February this year to oversee implementation of Lancashire’s first devolution deal – has to write to the government by the end of this week in order to fulfil a ministerial request, made when that agreement was confirmed in September 2024, for the county to bring forward proposals for “deeper” devolution within that timeframe.
That was widely interpreted as a none-too-subtle hint that ministers expected to see Lancashire set out plans to move to mayor-led devolution model in order to access the additional powers and funding that accompany the arrangement.
The county appeared to be approaching the end of its near decade-long internal wrangle over the subject when the LCCA – made up of the most senior figures on Lancashire County Council and Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen councils – resolved in October to consider introducing a mayoral model, but only if “clear and substantial benefits” could be demonstrated by the government beforehand.
County Cllr Atkinson – a longstanding opponent of elected mayors – was dissatisfied with the government’s response on that point, because it failed to provide precise details of the financial settlement that would come with a mayoral deal.
In contrast, his Labour counterparts at Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen said the case for a mayor was now more obvious than ever and should be pursued at full speed – before Lancashire became the only place in the North of England without one.
However, the government’s change of position on mayoral election timing elsewhere has now seemingly intervened in – and potentially overtaken – that local debate. It also calls into question whether ministers would decide next year to impose a mayor on Lancashire, as they have the power to do after 18 months of the LCCA’s operation.
At Tuesday’s LCCA meeting, County Cllr Atkinson said “informal” guidance from the Local Government Association (LGA) – on which he is the Reform UK group leader – was that the government wanted to see local government reorganisation “completed and the new [councils] bedded in before they move to the mayoral model”.
Blackburn with Darwen leader Phil Riley expressed mild alarm at that prospect, stating: “There’s a possibility that, given the preamble that we’ve had in Lancashire to some of these things, ‘bedding in’ could take 20 years.”
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