New Lancashire government structure unveiled

What a ridiculous decision. Why are councillors from Chorley and South Ribble going to have a say over West Lancs when they’ve got virtually no connection to the area? Whether some local councillors like it or not, West Lancs has far more in common with Liverpool and the wider Merseyside area than it does with central Lancashire. This reorganisation completely ignores that.

Horribly missed opportunity not to link West Lancs fully into the Liverpool City Region, its governance structures, strategic direction and funding streams, even if they aren’t currently all they might be.

How many people from Skem – or even Ormskirk – have ever even been to Chorley or Leyland (and vice versa)? The new South Lancs unitary is as badly bodged together as any of the 1974 monsters, a massive missed opportunity, and a case of parochial local politics and lack of imagination winning out.

What a mess. We are in danger of creating a feudal system of government across England with all this nonsense.

If we were to do this properly West Lancs would form part of the Liverpool City Region or be left alone until such time as that merge were possible. I believe that Preston, Chorley and South Ribble always formed a logical Central Lancashire area and seemed to work well together on strategic matters, such as the 2008 local plan.

In the new Lancashire, West Lancashire is South Lancashire and the real West Lancashire is actually Blackpool

Truly terrible decision. I agree with what others have said already – this feels like a massive missed opportunity for West Lancs not to join the Liverpool City Region.

With a pending PM who’s pushing for city regions to have more control over local decisions, this could’ve been the perfect opportunity for Skem to finally get the investment it desperately needs, including a long-overdue train station. It’s one of the biggest towns in the UK without one. But it wouldn’t just benefit Skem. Circa 40,000 people live there, many of whom already travel into the LCR for work, shopping and leisure. Putting Skem on the Merseyrail would make it easier for people to access jobs, help businesses recruit, and strengthen the wider regional economy. More importantly, West Lancs has far stronger transport links and a much closer economic and cultural connection with Liverpool than it does with Chorley or South Ribble. It feels like a natural fit with the Liverpool City Region, so this would’ve been a genuine win for everyone involved.

I don’t buy the comments from councillors and MP’s saying this somehow supports local decision-making. I’m from West Lancs, and I couldn’t tell you what’s in Chorley or South Ribble, let alone feel represented by them.

England’s greatest county, is reduced to a pathetic rump.

Local govt. reorganisation in Lancashire is long overdue; and this is better than the current dog’s dinner, but i agree with some of the other comments. A real missed opportunity. Chorley, Preston and South Ribble should have formed one LA, with West Lans joining the liverpool city region. East Lancashire should include Ribble Valley reflecting the economic footprint.

Hope it isn’t going to be like another Brexit. In other words, a complete failure.

Opportunity missed – West Lancashire should be part of the Liverpool City Region not this hitch pitch. Time for a Boundary Commission Review last one was 1996 which had an option for part of Sefton to combine with West Lancashire. Needs reviewing urgently

Bit of a shambles, the ‘status quo ante’ will probably have to be recreated in a few years when the new UAs prove too small to handle strategic issues and too poor to do the day job.

Why on earth would a true Lancastrian want to be part of Merseyside?
Last time I checked, under this government, you are still allowed to sell your house and move.
If you don’t like being part of Lancashire – off you go 👋
Personally, having lived in West Lancs all my life, I think to merge with South Ribble and Chorley is an excellent opportunity and will potentially clean up and significantly improve West Lancs, it can’t be any worse, thats for sure!!

How does this work with the forthcoming Central Lancashire Local Plan, given those authorities will be split across two unitaries which will also have areas not covered by the local plan

Ridiculous. Typical of Labour to shackle solvent Fylde with perpetually skint Labour-controlled Blackpool.

@ July 16, 2026 at 4:31 pm
By WayFay

Big is not always beautiful – or practical.
They seem the right size – three councils of roughly a third of a million each and one with about half a million. I’m sure more parish and town councils will be established too, to take on assets and powers.

@ July 16, 2026 at 3:23 pm
By Anonymous

The Blackpool HQd unitary will likely be called Fylde Coast

Why are people saying West Lancs (Blackpool) should be part of Liverpool 😳😳😳😒 seriously

Pleased that West Lancs got a great arrangement with Chorley and South Ribble. Predominantly rural with new towns and market towns. A great match. In addition the ratepayers have been spared getting hitched up to Liverpool City Region who would inevitably both bled them dry and exported their problems.
Ewually the problems of East Lancs and Blackpool have been contained. Doubtless PM Burnham will want to splurge on these types of areas.

Major upheaval councils were fine as they were this is an utter shambles wanted the five unitary model with the best deal for Burnley to merge with Pendle and Rossendale! Not a wise decision!

Why can’t Blackburn with Darwen be in with west Lancashire instead of east Lancashire. I for one do not want to be in east Lancashire council. At the moment Blackburn with Darwen are doing great as they are but if we need to change then we should be part of West Lancashire we are only about 5 mile from Preston where the other way we are 10 miles or more to Burnley so we should definitely be west cos the mileage between areas.

Should have just gone North Lancashire and South Lancashire and be done with it. Non of this really adds any significant value unless there’s £m to communicate it.

Don’t feel too bad about West Lancs joining Chorley instead of Merseyside, Chorley is actually a decently run council!

Of all the options on the table, I think Blackpool’s four authority proposal was the best, but this outcome was probably the least worst of the others. As others have said, this LGR process has been hamstrung by using 1974 boundaries as the building blocks. The fact that Wigan, Warrington, St Helens and Halton (with around 880,000 inhabitants) are now in three different Combined Authorities is a missed opportunity. West Lancs is largely a fiction in any case; the northern areas would be much better served by a Central Lancashire authority around Preston, where as the southern areas should be connected to their urban neighbours.

I envisage job losses, shouldn’t of this gone to a public vote? democracy has vanished from society. What happens if Preston has a Tory led council and Lancaster has a Labour led council. Disaster, not opportunity, saving money and putting workers on the unemployed register.

Good to be part of Ribblr Valley

Omg this is bad, living in Chorley we know nothing about
Skem West Lancashire etc, just some people who sound like scousers, and were just a bunch of woolybacks to them, who comes up with these stupid ideas! May as well of linked us to some place in North Wales

Stupid them down south do not know how we in north operate keep out of our lives

As a West Lancashire resident, I’m absolutely over the moon with this decision. It was never an option to move West Lancashire into Merseyside, But maintaining its alignment with other areas of South Lancashire is the only ideal solution.

Westlancs has been the poor cousin of Blackpool, Wyre, Fylde and Preston for too long and this will begin to ensure decisions and investment are made and remain much closer to home.

Locals against this need to have a good hard think, as the alternative is remaining as is.

In the media it suggests the government has gone with this option because they reflect the county’s ‘distinct local identities’ in what world do people from Ormskirk share an identity with anyone from Chorley or South Ribble? Laughable

I live in a West Lancashire Independent Living complex of 41 flats.The reorganisation will give them the opportunity to sell them off to House ingredients Associations,whether we want it or not.The services they offer are already being poor ,like the so called garden services.We have had only 1 cut this year

No surprises that Preston gets hold of Ribble Valley and one of the most cash rich councils. They’ll drain our funds for all their negligence. Hopefully we can continue spending it all quickly before the ‘city’ gets it

When the various options were first mooted, the logical solution was for Coastal Lancashire (Lancaster, Wyre, Blackpool & Fylde), Pennine Lancashire (Ribble Valley, Blackburn with Darwen. Hyndburn, Burnley, Pendle & Rawtenstall), and Central Lancashire ( Preston, South Ribble, & Chorley), with West Lancashire being transferred to Sefton.
But of course, common sense is never deployed when government and civil servants are involved.

Correction to my earlier comment, Rossendale, rather than Rawtenstall should of course been course

Funnily enough no one who lived in West Lancashire during the consultation wanted to be joined with Liverpool, the winning proposal to join with Chorley and South Ribble was West Lancashire’s proposal along with support from Chorley, Lancaster, Preston, Ribble Valley and South Ribble. No one else backed Lancashire County Councils proposal to split into two mega-boroughs north and south of Preston while Blackburns proposal for a three way split of east, west and north was the second most popular option with support from Fylde, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Wyre. Blackpool council had proposed an alternative 4 way split that cut Fylde and Ribble Valley in half but it was the only one that supported that. On the commuter flow front there was a flow of 7,000 from Sefton into West Lancashire, 4,000 from West Lancashire into Sefton, 2,000 from West Lancashire into Liverpool and 3,900 from Wigan into West Lancashire according to the 2021 census.

I’m quite flabbergasted to be honest, I’ve just read Steve Reed’s rationale for the new authorities. “This configuration will better ensure that the different economic, social and cultural characteristics of these areas are meaningfully reflected in the priorities of these new councils.” To be clear, West Lancs shares no economy, no culture and no similar characteristics with either of the other proposed towns in the new ‘South Lancashire’. Shame on the 45 West Lancs councillors who have essentially taken a back seat, and forced the residents into a unity authority that doesn’t reflect their modern day identity.

Living right on th boarder with Yorkshire and Lancashire I literally have one foot in each county and work in both. NYC (North Yorkshire Council) has in recent years gone through a similar merge where 8 borough councils became one, excluding The City of York. The area is vast from Skipton to Scarborough, some one hundred miles apart. The reason for the post is to reassure the citizens of Lancashire that if the new area is structured and managed well it will have many benefits that outweigh the negatives. Your voice is also heard over a far greater distance.

I trust Central Government will absorb Blackpool’s debt! This is grotesque, undemocratic and uncalled for reorganisation.

It is a big waste of time and money.
It is not needed and the councils should not have a say over other areas outside their own.

@Rob That’s the problem though. If your answer is “just move”, then you’ve completely missed the point.

Why should people in Skem have to accept being stuck in a county that barely invests in them? Young people struggle to get decent jobs because the town still hasn’t got a train station, something people have been asking for for decades. LCC always seems more interested in places closer to Preston, while West Lancs gets forgotten about.

Should people just settle for whatever minimum wage job they can find locally instead of being properly connected to the city they actually rely on? Most people here already look towards Liverpool for work, shopping, nights out, hospitals and everything else. That’s the reality, whether people like it or not.

It’s this kind of thinking, mostly from an older generation who still see everything through the old county boundaries, that’s held West Lancs back for years. It might keep things the same for now, but it’s only a matter of time before West Lancs ends up in the Liverpool City Region because that’s where it naturally fits.

Caused by Brexit and the rate of unemployment is completely risk and the council of Lancashire is very low fund level is causing the problem with for Lancashire council authority fund. So West Lancs would be move to Merseyside for the best 👍🏻

I do not know how representative the views expressedin these comments are but the people in the current West Lancs area appear to br pretty much 1/2 happy to join Chorley/South Ribble with the other 1/2 wanting to join Merseyside. I wonder if this is across the whole area or geographically based with those to the south west and closer to Merseyside wishing to join them and the rest happy to join Chorley/Leyland. Perhaps those who prefer Merseyside might try a petition to get a referendum set up and if it is a geographical divide then the current West Lancs could be split between the two authorities. I must admit to being surprised that Preston is to join with Lancaster as it has far closer toes to Chorley/South Ribble than to Lancaster. It would be interesting to see a contour type map of the travel to work in Preston areas which I believe would be a lot higher from Chorley/South Ribble than Garstang/Lancaster.

@Polly 17th July at 09.12am

Totally agreed with that, you’re absolutely right 👍🏻

@By Polly I agree with this. Aughton, Ormskirk and Skem are all clearly Liverpool / Sefton facing so I understand the confusion with being merged with non-local council areas. But I can also see the smaller villages north of Burscough wanting to maintain their Lancashire identity. It’s clear West Lancs is no longer cohesive, and I would suggest a local referendum is needed, although I’m not sure how Ashley Dalton MP (a proud Lancastrian) would feel about it.

This is disastrous for our community in wyre.
I believe there is no appetite whatsoever for wyre to be merged with Blackpool.
Usual politicians doing what they want but not what local people want – will they never ever listen

They should have gone further and just had north and south UA’s.

It’s a great idea on paper. What we really want is more funding up North. We need our pot holes fixing and most importantly our hospitals bringing up to the same standard as the south. There is a blatant north south divide and joining Lancashire together could help.

Reorganisation like this will only end the same as the Greater Manchester and Liverpool Mayoral ones, greater spending on the main city centre infrastructure. While this is paid for out of the surrounding towns and villages local council budgets. Which disadvantages them. So the mast majority of people suffer with less services while a small minority gets all the advantage. Done by a Labour Goverment just so he joke of officials like Andy Pandy Burnham and co can say look at what a good job they’ve done

The Government really needs to look at the boundary in West Lancashire, transport , health, social care etc are linked to Liverpool City Region. The place has nothing in common with Chorley. It’s a unstable hotch pitch that won’t last 10 years. There again might be safer there until the current Major is replaced with someone with vision and actually does something.

I live in Darwen and we are trying our best to keep our heads above the poverty line and failing. Now all the poorest boroughs linked together in one lump East Lancashire, there is no hope left. The south of England continue to carry out Gentrification and guess where the poorest come ? We need a general council tax for the whole country with the proceeds evenly spread to stop the rich boroughs dumping without contributing. This will happen locally now.

The statement from the reform leader of the county sums up why Lancashire is falling behind the rest of the uk . Hopefully the 4 new unitary councils together with a combined authority will start catching up .

I’ve just listened to Andy Burnham’s leadership speech, and his final point was about returning power from central government to local government.

If that’s the aim, how will it work if West Lancashire is placed under a South Lancashire authority that groups together towns with no real local connection? These areas share no common identity, no meaningful travel-to-work patterns, no strong sense of community, and little in the way of shared interests.

I agree with the majority of the comments here: West Lancashire should leave Lancashire and become part of Merseyside and the Liverpool City Region, where there are much stronger economic, social, and community links.

A bizarre choice and one that will simply unravel in time. A central Lancashire belt would be much more useful and effective. As for the newly created West Lancashire – don’t get me started, utter insanity and such a waste. I’d probably have gone for a Cheshire model of two local authorities, or three at best, but never with this geographical split. I can only assume that those making the decision have accepted that the A6 corridor between Preston and Lancaster will eventually be completely developed for housing end to end so let’s join unite them anyway in anticipation!

Lancs, the Holy Roman Empire of counties.

Organisational change only benefits management. The money wasted on meetings, salaries during the meetings, groups, sub groups, cost of administrative changes, paperwork, sign changes, job interviews, new positions, hierarchy, structural all give management something to do usually without improving what happens out in the real world.
This organisational change needs stringent auditing

Merging West Lancs into a new South Lancs, rather than part of Liverpool City Region makes total sense. As someone said above, Chorley and South Ribble have more in common with West Lancs in terms of landscape / rurality and the biggest settlements tending to be market towns. All a city region merger would cause for West Lancs is money being hoovered out of West Lancs to prop up Bootle and Southport, and excessive sprawl as the new district plan dumps 1000s of new homes and no infrastructure and facilities beyond new roads onto West Lancs. Get Skem and Burscough to join Ormskirk/Augthton et al on Merseyrail and hey presto – West Lancs gets the best of both worlds.

@ By X Lancs 2:51pm so you think because all three areas are somewhat subjectively rural, it makes perfect sense to join up with two areas that aren’t geographically close to the centre of West Lancs (Ormskirk), and which don’t represent the same culture, identity or share transport links? I think this is the problem, the north of the borough appear to live in a different world. Aughton, Ormskirk and Skelmersdale deserve better, take us out of Lancashire.

How many council houses are going to be built?

Has Lancashire been chosen to be the new centre of government replacing London?

@ X Lancs, the review in the mid 90s if sefton had an option of combining Southport and Formby with West Lancashire not Bootle or the rest of Sefton. This makes a lot of sense now oh it was rejected largely to do with aligning pensioners bus pass but this has changed. This would be the best solution now not this shambles.

Absolutely ludicrous some councils will now pick up debt from others who are totally incompetent.

Where does Liverpool come into this

Literally no one wants any part of Lancs to be merged with Merseyside..it makes zero sense , was never on the cards and will never happen. If success is the criteria then it would be better to absorb Merseyside and parts of west Lancs into Greater Manchester and get some of that Manchesterism that seems to be the current buzzword.

Am I the only one who thinks everyone is debating West Lancashire while almost nobody is questioning Preston being grouped with Lancaster and Ribble Valley? What a weird geography that is.

Just Love reading all The Blob comments, Don’t Like change! Do they?

The proposals appear similar to those adopted by the Lancashire County Council from about 2005 onwards. In about 2005 the management structure of the highway authority added an additional management tier comprised of three Area Managers. However, the difference then was that the administration area of Lancashire was divided into three and not four distinct areas. Each of those three areas was operationally led by a new post of Area Manager. But each Area Manager led a separate Area, comprised of Area North, Area South and Area East. There was at that time no defined Area West. If you wish to discuss this further then please let me know.

I think people on here forget that post-1974 Lancashire actually has a bigger population than Merseyside. It also has employment strengths such as in Aerospace, advanced manufacturing and tech as well as tourism and support and legal services.

What happens to the Central Lancashire Local Plan when Preston is split from Chorley and South Ribble?

There really needs a new Royal Commission on local government similar to the Refcliffe- Maud Commission using the north west as a pilot and using travel to work areas as a basis. GM, LCR, 2Cheshires and this is just a mess that doesn’t work

The once mighty Lancashire, reduced to this. What a depressing state of affairs. From being the economic engine of Europe to a rump.

This is the most illogical split up of any of the 14 counties they decided upon. The Preston Urban area is split in two with Preston now joined to Lancaster miles away rather than its suburbs in the south. But Garstang in the middle of Preston and Lancaster is in yet another unitary authority. All the unitary authorities have ridiculous shapes. Some bod in central government has lazily grouped together districts rather than updating boundaries to represent some logical geographical area. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to make some sensible boundaries. And in Lancashire’s case they’ve badly botched it due to the vested interests of district councillors and laziness of central government. Such a shame. I hope they change their mind.