Made In Preston – the blog

Lancashire County Council put a number of proposals forward to reduce their expenditure to meet the allocated budget from the government.

Some headlines are the closure of the Museum of Lancashire on Stanley Street, plus several other museums including Helmshore and Queens Street Mill in Burnley which are interesting presentations of Lancashire’s cotton industry.   Helmshore having a display of Richard Arkwright, born in Preston and inventor of the water frame.

Over half of the Lancashire Libraries are slated to be closed. Some unofficial comment being that areas with 2 libraries will have one closed.  Also rural bus services are to be cut back including the Fleetwood to Wyre Ferry which has been on regional TV.

In some cases it appears the proposal has been made in the hope that it will encourage other funding sources to come forward.  Perhaps the Fleetwood ferry is one and all over the country libraries are being kept open by volunteer staff.

Some comment on the news from an East Lancashire MP was that Lancashire has taken on board Preston bus station and is a waste of money.

Whether thse proposals are approved will be discussed in council this week.

Preston is home to Lancashire County Council and perhaps that is why Preston has never rocked the boat and become a Unitary Council such as Blackburn & Darwen and Blackpool.  Talk of devolution to the north of England opens the doors to many options and perhaps is one reason why it’s unlikely to happen.

Lancashire already has the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership and a City Deal to focus investment covering Preston and it’s surrounding area.   Recently Manchester has been given bigger powers and control of budgets in return for having an elected Mayor.  Could this be done for Preston and in effect would this be more like splitting Lancashire into west, east and perhaps north.  With Preston being the centre of the western part.

The metropolitan boroughs such as Wigan and Bolton are effectively single tier government.  With Wigan having 75 councillors by combining what was formerly 14 separate councils.   Greater Manchester is managed by a Combined Authority of a representative councillor from each borough.

Whether dividing Lancashire into Preston, Lancaster and Burnley regions would provide advantage isn’t clear.  It would reduce elections if Lancashire was run like Greater Manchester.  There are personal attachments to the name Lancashire so sentiment might play a part as much as logic.

The rural areas of such a region would be Conservative while Preston itself would be Labour.  Who would hold the balance? This creates another difficulty as the strongly Conservative rural areas would not want to effectively give up their autonomy if it could be outvoted in a bigger council and vice versa.  Wigan and its merged constituents is almost entirely Labour so there is no political obstacle.

It could also be said that local accountability is better based upon Lancashire and the smaller local councils that we have now.