Focus on keeping councils local!

The Labour Government is intending to push ahead with replacing both the District Councils and Lancashire County Council with three Unitary Authorities and above them a Combined Authority and Mayor, with unelected officials running services such as Policing, Fire and Civil Defence, Planning, social care and housing, on behalf of a Mayor who cannot possibly oversee them all. 

At the same time Pendle Borough would become a part of a Greater Blackburn council, weakening the local links of local people with the politicians who represent them. Liberal Democrats believe that this will be bad for local democracy and bad for our communities.

Liberal Democrats believe that this interference in local Government by politicians based in London is ignoring the needs of our Towns and rurual communities, and that it would be much better to create Regional Government for the North that takes these powers away from Westminster and places them here in our region where our politicians can decide how our politics is run. We would keep our local councils doing the work that they do, but with properly guaranteed funding and the power to innovate.

The Liberals, led by William Ewart Gladstone, introduced the creation of district and parish councils in the Parish Councils Bill, published in 1893. Town and parish councils were established by Act of Parliament in 1894. Today there are around 9,000 such local councils in England with around 80,000 citizens serving as voluntary but elected parish councillors. They are democratically elected and represent some 16 million people across the country.

With more control and decisions being taken locally, here in our community, we could have the politics we want, giving real power to the people.

Keeping local Control!

At Pendle Council, the Liberal Democrat Group Leader and Deputy Leader of Pendle Council, Councillor David Whipp, moved a motion condemning the amalgamation of Pendle into a Greater Blackburn Council. The motion was passed and is now the Policy of Pendle Council.

Local Government Reorganisation

Council notes the Government's White Paper published on 16th December setting out their intention to replace districts like Pendle with unitary councils with populations of half a million people.

Council also notes the proposal drawn up by one of Pendle's MPs to create a monster council covering the whole of East Lancashire including Blackburn with Darwen unitary authority (population 500,000), and that the MP had no discussions with local councillors in Pendle before submitting the proposal.

Council reaffirms its previous resolutions on local government reorganisation and reiterates its requests that local services and facilities continue to be provided by truly local councils sensitive to the needs of, and accountable through the ballot box to, local
residents.

Council believes that reorganisation ensuing from the White Paper will have significant short- and medium-term financial costs, not savings; that the impact on services will be severely detrimental; that the proposals will create a massive democratic deficit, with power being centralised further away; and that attention to problems affecting residents will be diverted into Local Government Reorganisation discussions.

Accordingly, Council resolves to work with neighbouring authorities, Burnley, Rossendale and Ribble Valley to achieve the best possible outcome for local people with respect to the structure of local governance, and requests Pendle's two MPs to work alongside this council to achieve this aim.