Legal options kept open over shake-up

Lancashire County Council could launch legal proceedings against the government after being left in the dark about the nature of an unexpected pause in plans for a radical local authority shake-up.

Ministers revealed in mid-July that they had chosen to carve Lancashire into four new council areas as part of a controversial streamlining programme that will see its 15 main authorities – including the county council – scrapped.

However, on 7th September, the government made the shock announcement that the long-established timetable for the transition to the new councils was being ripped up while it checked whether the process it had followed was lawful.

It has now emerged that the county council had already been seeking details about the evidence on which the decision to create the four new Lancashire authorities had been based, in order to decide whether to challenge it via a judicial review.

The chosen four-way split was one of five options Lancashire’s existing councils had put forward – in answer to a government call for them to set out their preferences – all of which were assessed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

The others would have seen Lancashire cut into either two, three or five new local authority areas – or an alternative four-configuration to the one that was ultimately selected.

Any of the current councils that want to contest the basis for the government’s decision have exactly three months from the date it was announced – on 16th July – to mount a judicial review.

However, a county council cabinet meeting on Thursday heard that the authority had been trying to establish whether that clock was still ticking in the wake of last month’s sudden pause.

The answer hinges on whether the government has formally ditched the decision it announced in July and restarted the process from scratch – reassessing each of the proposals before coming to a fresh conclusion – or is simply planning to more fully justify its original choice.

Local government secretary Angela Rayner said in the Commons last month that Lancashire’s council overhaul was one of 14 revamps taking place nationwide that would be subject to a “review”. Meanwhile, she said she would “withdraw” decisions in relation to four others, where some of the councils concerned had already set out a legal challenge – giving that group more clear-cut certainty.

Lancashire County Council cabinet members heard that a 17th September letter from leader Stephen Atkinson to devolution minister Jim McMahon – seeking clarification on whether the review will involve a “reconsideration of all proposals” put forward by Lancashire’s authorities – had gone unanswered.

The issue was raised again during an already-scheduled face-to-face meeting between the pair five days later – and followed up in further correspondence and requests from County Hall officers during the last week of September. But no response to the key question has been provided.

If the government declares after 16th October that it is standing by its July decision – without having gone back to the drawing board to issue it anew – the county council will have missed its opportunity to seek a judicial review, should it then want to do so.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that the MHCLG has also refused to release the rationale for its original conclusion.

Against that backdrop, the county council’s cabinet voted to permit County Cllr Atkinson and the authority’s senior officers to seek an extension – a so-called ‘stay’ – to the three-month time limit for a legal challenge, should it be deemed necessary in the coming days.

A report presented to the meeting stated that a successful “protective claim” would “preserve the council’s ability to challenge the July decision if necessary”, beyond the mid-October deadline – without committing it to actually doing so until it has seen the outcome of the government’s review.

Recommending that the Reform UK-run authority move to keep its legal options open, County Cllr Atkinson said it “protects the council’s position [and] affords maximum flexibility and minimal costs”, which a cabinet report estimated would be in the region of £5,000.

He added: “We’ve tried to engage constructively with the government – and we tried to build trust with [them].

“I have spoken directly with the Secretary of State and the minister. We’ve always tried to have a respectful conversation, but unfortunately, the legal process is driving us against the statutory time limit.

“We’ve been told we will get a letter back [from the government] every day now for about the last five days.

“We will continue to act carefully, responsibly and in the best interests of Lancashire’s residents, communities, staff and partners.”

Gina Dowding, deputy leader of the Progressive Lancashire main opposition group, warned that the public was now increasingly “confused” about the local government reorganisation process.

Until the delay was announced last month, the new councils had been set to take over from 1st April 2028. The plan was for the 2027 local elections to be used to establish the organisations in ‘shadow’ form, allowing them an 11-month transition, during which they would operate alongside the authorities that they would eventually replace.

However, the pause in the process means the polls to be held next year have now reverted back to being for the existing councils that would ordinarily have been scheduled to stage them.

The county council’s favoured option for the government-ordered revamp was to split Lancashire into just two new authorities – one for the north of the county, incorporating Preston, Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre, Lancaster and Ribble Valley, and another for the south, featuring South Ribble, Chorley, West Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Pendle.

Asked by Progressive Lancashire group leader Azhar Ali whether he would be satisfied if the government eventually came round to that idea, County Cllr Atkinson stressed that the current legal considerations were not actually concerned with “which model to choose”.

“This is purely about looking at the facts of how the decision was reached. We need to make sure that [it] has been made properly, in a proper process – and [that] it reflects all the challenges in Lancashire. So there’s no right or wrong answer at this stage,” said County Cllr Atkinson, who has long been opposed in principle to the type of changes the government is imposing on the county.

County council cabinet member for adult social care Tom Pickup condemned the uncertainty unleashed by the delay.

“How are we supposed to make longer term decisions? Because we don’t know whether we’re trying to set things up to disaggregate [county services to the new authorities]…or are we targeting savings because Lancashire County Council is here to stay and we want to get it in a good financial position,” he said.

The revamp – if it ultimately goes ahead in some form – will bring an end to the current ‘two-tier’ system, under which responsibility for services is split between the county council, which looks after the likes of social care, highways and schools, and 12 smaller district authorities, like Preston, Burnley and Wyre, which take care of matters such as waste collection, parks, housing and planning applications in their own areas. Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen councils already deliver all local services within their borders, as the proposed new authorities are set to do – but over much larger swathes of the county.

Plans on pause

The four new local authorities the government announced it was planning to create for Lancashire – over which a question mark now hangs – are:

NORTH LANCASHIRE – made up of the existing Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley council areas;

SOUTH LANCASHIRE – made up of the existing Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire council areas;

FYLDE COAST – made up of the existing Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre council areas;

PENNINE LANCASHIRE – made up of the existing Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Pendle council areas.

How did you work that one out?

The five proposals that Lancashire’s existing councils put forward for redrawing the local authority map in the county amounted to more than 800 pages of supporting evidence, including financial forecasts and practical implications for each of the suggested configurations. However, the government’s reasoning for the option it ultimately picked in July was set out in a letter spanning just four-and-a-half pages.

Early the following month, County Cllr Atkinson wrote to Angela Rayner asking for further detail, including:

***a “comparative assessment” of each of the options against the government’s criteria for the kind of proposals it was seeking;

***reasons the government preferred the selected four-council proposal – particularly in relation to how “local identity, economic geography, devolution and community governance were balanced against other relevant considerations including financial resilience, service sustainability, population size, transition risk [and] implementation complexity”;

***financial, service resilience and implementation analysis – including “material addressing the anticipated financial sustainability of the selected model, its expected transition and transformation costs, recurring savings and payback period, and any assessment of whether the proposed new authorities would have sufficient resilience to deliver key statutory services safely and effectively”.

However, the government declined to release the details under freedom of information laws, stating that they relate to “a live policy” and that their disclosure would be “liable to cause a ‘chilling effect’” on officials and ministers who “must feel able to consider the information and advice before them and be able to reach objective, fully informed decisions without impediment and free from [the] distraction that such information will prematurely be made public”.