Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.
We’ve covered local government reorganisation in some depth on these pages and continue that trend today.
The move will, ultimately, mean 14 chief executives become four. While it can be expected that more senior roles will exist - a direct result of having four big councils rather than a large volume of smaller ones - this will ultimately mean competition for the chief executive roles.
Pay at senior level in local authorities has long been debated - particularly when top bosses wind up bagging a bigger salary than the Prime Minister. But the defence has long been that this is necessary to ensure the best candidates can be found.
There are now calls for those salaries to be capped in comparison to the lowest paid members of staff.
We also, ahead of Thursday’s cabinet meeting, update on reaction to plans by Reform UK to withdraw Lancashire from the refugee resettlement scheme. This topic, particularly the fact that it will not save a penny, has only been picked up by The Lancashire Lead.
Lancashire briefing
🛏️ A Lancashire MP has hit out at plans to withdraw Lancashire from refugee resettlement schemes which Lancashire County Council’s own reports set out would likely come at a cost rather than a saving.
The decision will be made at a cabinet meeting tomorrow (3 September) and comes after Joshua Roberts, Reform UK’s cabinet member for rural affairs, environment and communities, announced the plan on the eve of the May local elections.
Paul Foster, Labour’s MP for South Ribble, described the presentation of this as something that could be saved and reinvested in Lancashire as ‘particularly misleading’.
He told The Lancashire Lead: “The suggestion that Lancashire is spending £7 million a year of local taxpayers’ money on refugee resettlement is particularly misleading. Lancashire County Council’s own information makes clear that its Refugee Integration Team is fully funded by central government and that the resettlement schemes themselves are supported through government grant funding.
“Presenting that £7 million as though it is simply Lancashire taxpayers’ money that can now be saved and spent elsewhere gives people a very different impression of how the system actually works.
“I’m also uncomfortable with the wider tone of this. Lancashire has always been a welcoming place and I’m proud of that. Of course people expect their council to look after local residents and spend public money responsibly, I completely agree with them. But supporting people in Lancashire and showing compassion to people who have fled war and persecution are not mutually exclusive.
“Politics works best when we bring people together and are straight with them about the facts. I find it really disappointing to see Reform increasingly trying to divide people into ‘us and them’, particularly when the financial argument being used to justify it doesn’t tell the full story.
“If Reform want to withdraw Lancashire from these schemes, that is a political choice they are entitled to make. But they should be honest with Lancashire residents about what that decision does and does not save.”
Reform UK told The Lancashire Lead they would not comment until after Thursday’s cabinet meeting.
🚄 An East Lancashire town that has been left without a passenger rail service for half a century could have its commuter line restored, following backlash after the proposals were left out of county transport plans.
Campaigners have been calling for Rawtenstall’s passenger service to be brought back for years, with plans to create the ‘City Valley Rail Link’ on the same line that has been maintained by the heritage East Lancashire Railway in the decades after the town’s station closed in 1972.
But when the new Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA) unveiled its first ever Local Transport Plan earlier this year, this City Valley Rail Link was conspicuously missing from the scheme to re-invest in the county’s railway services.
Rossendale and Darwen’s MP Andy MacNae called this omission ‘incomprehensible’ at the time, but has recently revealed that plans to restore the commuter service on the heritage railway line are back on track.
But on Friday, August 28, Andy MacNae MP revealed that pleas from residents and district leaders had not fallen on deaf ears, with the City Valley Rail Link now being included in the latest draft of the LCCA’s Implementation Plan for local transport.
🏠 Two Lancashire councils have failed to deliver the number of new homes their areas need, according to new figures.
Just 48 percent of the properties required in the Lancaster City Council patch were actually built over a three-year period, while Chorley Council witnessed 63 percent of its tally come to fruition.
Across Lancashire, a total of 18,291 dwellings sprung up between 2022/23 and 2024/25 – with 11 out 14 local authority areas exceeding their minimum new housing needs, as calculated by a government formula.
Burnley, Preston, Ribble Valley and Hyndburn all saw more than five times as many homes built as were demanded by that calculation – with Preston delivering the most by volume at 3,695 units.
However, in Lancaster, only 612 dwellings were completed in the timeframe out of the city’s 1,271 target. Meanwhile, Chorley achieved 986 new properties – but the borough had been aiming for 1,553.
Cllr Alex Hilton, Chorley’s cabinet member for planning and development, said: “We are aware of the figures released and were expecting this outcome as the development of the Central Lancashire Local Plan (2023-2041) is still ongoing which will identify our five-year supply for housing in the area.
“The findings provide no change to how we as a council currently make our planning decisions.”
Meanwhile, Lancaster City Council’s cabinet member for planning, Sue Tyldsley noted that this year was the first time her authority had fallen below a perfect 100 percent score in the housing delivery test since it was introduced in 2019.
Calls for pay of chief executives to be capped compared to lowest-paid staff
By Paul Faulkner
The chief executives that will run Lancashire’s four new super councils should not be paid more than the Prime Minister, a current county councillor has said.
Michael Lavalette – an independent member of the Progressive Lancashire opposition group at County Hall – is also calling for the wages of the most senior office-holder at each of the authorities to be capped at a fixed number of times above those of the lowest-paid member of staff.
Lancashire’s 15 main councils are being axed as part of a government-ordered shake-up. Their successors – when they take over in April 2028 – will deliver all local authority services in their sprawling new areas, meaning they will have more responsibilities than most of the councils they replace.
County Cllr Lavalette fears that will cause what he believes are already overly-inflated pay packets to balloon yet further – beyond even the £182,000 salary to which the PM is entitled. That is a wage already topped by two existing council chiefs in the county.
“[This isn’t] personal, but I’m sure most people cannot understand why the chief executive of a local authority gets paid more than the Prime Minister – how can that be justified?” he asked.
“Plus, if somebody’s earning that much money, they have no experience of what ordinary people in Lancashire are going through in terms of things like the cost-of- living crisis.