Lancashire County Council will proceed with elections next year despite the government's plan to abolish it and replace it with new authorities. The government stated that local elections are expected to continue, but could be postponed if an authority seeks to discuss alternative council setups. Lancashire County Council has no plans to engage with the government before the January 10th deadline, meaning the vote for 84 council members will likely proceed.
Lancashire County Council has no plans to seek the cancellation of elections to the authority next year, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands. The possibility of scrapping next May’s vote was opened up by the government last week when it revealed its intention to abolish all local authorities in ‘two-tier’ areas like Lancashire .
However, speaking in the Commons after the launch of the devolution white paper last Monday, local government minister Jim McMahon said local polls could be postponed if an authority set to disappear under the forthcoming revamp “actively approach” the government to say it wanted to discuss proposals for a new council set-up. He has since written to leaders in areas including Lancashire to tell them that he needs to know by 10th January if they want their elections to be cancelled.
That was a reference to a request by the minister back in September to bring forward proposals by next autumn for ways in which the county’s current devolution deal – due to come into effect early next year – could be deepened in order to give Lancashire more power and cash than is currently on the table.
Such a manoeuvre would, in any case, be complicated by lack of agreement amongst all 15 Lancashire leaders about when, how – and even whether – such wholesale changes should be made. The white paper called for local areas to work together to redraw the local authority landscape in their patch rather than come up with “competing” proposals for a shake-up.
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