M6 chaos brings Lancashire to a standstill - again
Plus: Maya Ellis on the importance of paternity leave, missing grants and our recommendations
Hello and welcome to the 68th issue of The Lancashire Lead. Today we will be taking a look at the M6 after what feels like yet another week where the stretch between Preston and Lancaster has been brought to a standstill by a crash.
Elsewhere, Maya Ellis, the MP for Ribble Valley, spoke in parliament this week on the importance of paternity lead for her and her family. Ellis took the seat in Ribble Valley from 32-year Tory stalwart Nigel Evans - who retained the goodwill of many of his constituents - and it probably wouldn’t be unfair to say she wasn’t among the ‘Labour gain’ favourites ahead of 2024.
We also have a look at how grants given to community organisations by Lancashire County Council aren’t yielding much in the way of evidence of how they’ve been spent. That £191,000 is not an insignificant amount of money even if it’s dwarfed by the LCC budget as a whole.
Through my role with Blog Preston, we spend a significant amount of time reporting on what happens on the M6 and this week is no different. A lorry driver in his 50s died this week (6 November) after the vehicle he was driving crossed from the northbound carriageway into the southbound carriageway and crashed into oncoming traffic.
Others were taken to hospital with serious injuries and the carriageway was closed fully for over 12 hours and well into the next day as a result.
Our thoughts go out to his loved ones - and of those who were injured or otherwise concerned when they saw the news of the crash.
What’s absolutely clear from the conversations we see taking place after these crashes is that patience is low in supply for commuters in Lancashire.
The impact of serious crashes on the motorways is felt through the road network in the immediate aftermath. In Preston in particular, it feels like a crash on the motorway brings the city to a standstill at least once per week - and that’s what readers tell us.
That impatience has manifested in quite dangerous behaviour after this crash and another last month.
Lorry drivers were slammed by police in the aftermath of the crash on Wednesday for using a closed lane to dodge around what was quite significant congestion. Police warned that they would be prosecuting those drivers.
A particularly disruptive crash at the end of August saw similar results.
That incident, on the M6 near Leyland, saw a crash between a lorry carrying beer, a campervan and other cars and saw seven people injured.
Among other things, the tins of Strongbow and John Smiths across the carriageway meant quite a significant clean-up operation and - obviously - delays.
In this instance, police sent out court summons to ten vehicles who were caught using the hard shoulder to exit the motorway and their actions directly impacted the efforts of emergency services to get to the scene.
It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how that behaviour could have serious consequences in the future. What anyone is doing about the level of congestion on motorways, the road networks and so on however is less clear.
Plans for new smart motorways were scrapped in 2023 by then-PM Rishi Sunak under intense pressure amid falling public confidence in the schemes, though the government insisted smart motorways did not cause an increase in crashes.
It will have been popular with sceptics of smart motorways but came at the cost of the increased capacity it would provide. That decision came too late for the stretch of M6 between junction 21 and 26 which will be a fully-functional all-lane running motorway from Spring 2025.
We asked National Highways if there was anything in the pipeline to lessen the impact of these incidents - and any insight they could give into why repair work can take such a significant period of time. A spokesperson told The Lancashire Lead:
"Firstly, our thoughts and sympathies are with all those affected following very sad and serious incidents on the M6.
“Safety is, and always will be, our number one priority and one death on our roads is one too many. With ongoing police investigations, it would be inappropriate to comment on any individual incident.”
They added that when crashes require a police investigation, they cannot undertake necessary repair work until it is complete. This is why you might see a significant gap between an incident happened and repair work taking place.
Fuel spillages to carriageways can also mean resurfacing work so any incident that requires both a lengthy police investigation and resurfacing work is likely to be particularly disruptive.
Maya Ellis, MP for Ribble Valley, spoke in parliament this week on how important paternity leave was for her and she transitioned into her new role.
Ellis said that she is very grateful that her partner was able to do this - but noted that few dads take up the option of paternity leave - or even have the option.
Here’s the key bit of what she said.
I will touch on my utmost priority as a Member of Parliament: working families. We need to make life much more tenable, more affordable and, dare I say, more joyful for parents, who want to contribute to our country while also raising good humans. It is also critical to me that we make sure the children have the lives, support and love they deserve.
We have a vision for an innovative and high-growth economy, but we do not get innovation without diversity of thought. This Parliament is the most diverse in history, and I, as one of those new diverse Members, am able to be here with my mental health just about intact only because my husband took three months of paternity leave with both our children. This meant that, when an election was called two days after I was selected as the Labour candidate, I did not have to spend a single second handing childcare over to him; he already knew Toggle showing location of how to change a nappy, what to pack in a bag and the books my children want to read at bedtime. I fully believe I would not be standing here now if he had not taken paternity leave. That opportunity should not be rare.
Forgive me for speaking in a hetero-normative context, but that is my personal experience. We know that few dads take up paternity or parental leave, which means that many women cannot dream of putting themselves forward for political office, as I did. Knowing that my husband can confidently care for my children gives me time to think, to organise and to dream. Too many women are still unable to do this because their mental load fills every bit of additional brain space they have.
We need the ideas and dreams of mothers and parents to propel our businesses, our public services and our society. I was delighted to join the campaigning organisations Pregnant Then Screwed and The Dad Shift earlier this month to try to shift the dial on parenting equality. I hope to see some truly ambitious step changes as our Government review paternity leave over this coming year, not only to create a new vision of fatherhood in this country, but to unlock the dreams and plans of mothers, which we have been so desperately lacking but which are so desperately important. I send a huge thank you to my incredible husband for holding the fort at home, and for being the foundation of my standing here today.
Trail goes cold on grant money
By Paul Faulkner
Only two in five of the hundreds of community organisations given grants by Lancashire county councillors last year have so far provided evidence of how they spent the cash.
County Hall’s 84 elected representatives awarded just over £191,000 to voluntary and faith groups operating in their area during the 12 months to April 2024.
A total of 452 good causes benefited from the Local Member Grants Scheme (LMGS) in that period – but as of the end of September this year, only 181 of them had proved to Lancashire County Council that the money they received had been used for its intended purpose.
It is understood the authority prefers to judge the response rate to its request for that information over a longer period – because some of the cash may have funded activities which took place only this summer.
“Satisfactory evidence” for the use of £67,698 of last year’s grants had been submitted to the county council within six months of the 2023/24 scheme closing – 35 percent of the total pot – with proof in relation to £123,416 of awards outstanding.
However, analysis of the initiative for the 2022/23 financial year – conducted 12 months after it ended – found that 83 percent of LMGS spending was ultimately accounted for.
Each year, members are allocated a £2,000 budget by the county council which they can use to support projects within their patch – although last year, the amount was boosted to £2,500 to fund local celebrations of the King’s coronation. County councillors decide at their own discretion which schemes to support based on applications made by groups seeking specific help.
The authority requests evidence of how individual grants have been used – either after a recipient organisation’s project has ended or six months after the money was issued – in order to ensure rules have been complied with and the cash has been spent on the basis agreed by the member who awarded it.
When that information is not provided, the issuing county councillor is notified and would then have to consider whether to approve any future application from that group given their failure to engage with the authority – although there would be nothing to prevent them from doing so.
A report presented to a recent meeting of the county council’s audit, risk and governance committee said that monitoring of the grant money is intended to be “proportionate”, taking into account the size of the organisations that receive the support and the resultant to keep requests for paperwork “to a minimum”.
A spokesperson for Lancashire County Council said: “These are small grants – typically just a few hundred pounds – to small community organisations, often run by volunteers.
“We do send reminders to recipients asking for relevant documentation, but understand it can sometimes take time to get the information as these are not large scale professional bodies.
“In some cases community organisations come together for a single event or activity and awards are made a long time in advance to aid planning.
“Regular updates are made to the audit, risk and governance committee to assure councillors that the process is robust and there are no major concerns with the awards.
“Councillors generally consider the scheme to be a really positive one, helping them to support small local groups to make a big difference in their communities with relatively small sums of money.”
Across 2023/24, the highest rate of outstanding evidence requests relates to the last month of the financial year – with 60 of the 65 projects given support in March 2024 not yet having provided the necessary information. However, details have also yet to be submitted regarding the use of cash issued much earlier in the year – with 119 of the 260 schemes funded between April and October 2023 still to report back.
Josh Mynott, the county council’s head of democratic services, told committee members that the groups that do not use the money in full, for the purpose they were awarded it, usually return the balance to County Hall.
“Most organisations are very open and honest about it – they appreciate the money they get,” he said.
Any money that goes unspent by a community group during the financial year in which it was issued can be returned to the relevant county councillor’s LMGS budget, while most of any cash that members have failed to award from their yearly allocations is instead used for the benefit of children in care and recent care leavers.
During 2023/24, 544 applications for funding were received by county councillors – meaning more than 90 were unsuccessful.
🚒 A section of St Joseph’s Orphanage in Preston will be demolished after the latest fire to hit the endangered building this week (Blog Preston).
🔴 Labour’s Joel McKevitt has won the Bispham by-election in Blackpool by the narrowest of margins – just 12 votes (Blackpool Lead).
🚆 The bosses of East Lancashire's main train operator have agreed to meet Blackburn with Darwen Council's leader over 'completely unacceptable' service cancellations affecting the borough (Lancashire Telegraph).
By Robbie Macdonald
Organisations behind plans to build the shell or dome-shaped Morecambe Eden Project attraction say the funding situation has been confirmed, following the new Labour government’s autumn budget.
Eden ideas and funding proposals had been developed under the previous Conservative government and were partly linked to levelling-up cash. A sum of £50million had been earmarked from the UK Levelling-Up Fund with another £50million to be raised by the Eden Project from private supporters, sponsors and investors.
But when the new Labour government won this summer’s general election. there was some uncertainty about levelling-up schemes and other regional projects, such as town deals, which were reviewed.
But the Eden Project, Lancaster City Council, Lancaster University and Lancashire County Council recently issued a joint update saying they had the confirmation they needed from the new government.
They said : “We are delighted that the government has confirmed the original £50million commitment to Eden Project Morecambe. While there is still a process to go through to confirm the final details of this, this is a major milestone in this dynamic project, a very significant step forward in delivering this project which will do so much for Morecambe, Lancashire, and the wider region.
“All of the partners are working hard to bring this transformational project together. It’s thanks to everyone’s hard work, vision and determination that we’re in this position.
“We are hopeful for final confirmation of the government investment shortly and aim to provide further updates on the full funding package and delivery plans for the site.”
Next Friday sees the opening of Blackpool’s Christmas markets - or Christmas By The Sea if you prefer its proper name.
At Blackpool’s Tower Festival Headland, the area will be “transformed” into a festive village with an outdoor skating rink, simulated snow, log cabins, light installations and so on.
People’s mileage for a Christmas market varies considerable from person to person but if they are your thing and you’ve never been to the Blackpool version - give Manchester a miss this year.
And some other What’s On stories that have caught the eye over the last seven days:
Thanks for reading the 68th edition of The Lancashire Lead. I’ll be back with the next issue on Wednesday. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please share so others can find it too and subscribe to receive future editions.
