'Don't make us prepare for elections that will never happen', Lancashire councils warn

The government is being urged to speed up the process that will officially cancel a set of abandoned local elections in Lancashire - so councils can focus on organising the polls that will be held in their place.

On the current electoral calendar, 13 of the county's local authorities are scheduled to stage votes in May 2027.

However, a government-ordered shake-up means that all 15 Lancashire councils - Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Burnley, Chorley, Fylde, Hyndburn, Lancaster, Pendle, Preston, Ribble Valley, Rossendale ,South Ribble, West Lancashire, Wyre and Lancashire County Council - are to be scrapped less than 12 months later and replaced with just four new authorities covering the whole of the county between them.

As part of the overhaul, elections to so-called ‘shadow’ versions of the successor councils are to be held next May instead of votes for the authorities whose days are numbered.

However, that change to the voting arrangements will be officially confirmed only once legislation enacting the transition arrangements - known as a structural changes order (SCO) - completes its passage through Parliament.

A letter sent to Lancashire council leaders and chief executives from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) last month said the order is not expected to come into force until next year - and the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands there has been an indication that it could be as late as March.

That would be just two months before local election day and, until the SCO is in place, it is believed the existing councils will be obliged to proceed on the basis that their own scheduled elections are going ahead - even though, barring any last-minute hiccups, that is not the case.

Now, several of those authorities have called for an earlier resolution to the situation, so that they can begin preparing for the polls that will actually be held - and start readying the public for their first democratic engagement with the new councils that will be responsible for providing all services in each of their areas from April 2028.

From that date, all 15 existing authorities will cease to exist. They will be replaced by standalone councils covering: Preston, Lancaster and Ribble Valley; Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire; Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre; and Blackburn-with Darwen, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale.

Elections teams in the current councils will act as electoral registration offices for their areas, making arrangements for elections in the usual way. But for practical reasons - not least the public information campaign that will have to be mounted to explain to residents the biggest change in the authorities they will be voting for in more than 50 years - councils will not want the complications and unnecessary expense a lengthy SCO process could bring.

Wyre Council leader Michael Vincent led the push for certainty, telling the LDRS: “We need this confirmation quickly so that we can focus on the huge amount of [other] work we need to do in relation to local government reorganisation, rather than also preparing for elections we know are unlikely to happen - but we’ve not had any assurance we will get this.”

The leader of Preston City Council, Matthew Brown, said he “shared” those concerns, adding: “We would ask that the government completes the structural changes order…before Christmas. The election process is important - and certainty and clarity are needed as soon as possible.”

The LDRS understands that local election preparation steps up early in the new year - which is why Christmas is regarded as an ideal cut-off time for completion of the SCO. Prior to that, the focus of councils is largely on the annual ‘canvass’ to determine that the details for each household and its occupants are correct on the electoral register - and that there have not been any changes.

A spokesperson for Blackpool Council said: “Until the structural changes order has been approved in Parliament, we won’t have confirmation that the local elections scheduled for May 2027 are not going ahead.

“While we will continue to make early preparations for those elections as usual, costs will be minimised as much as possible while we await completion of the SCO process.

“The local government reorganisation programme team is continuing to impress upon government the need to complete the SCO process as early as possible in 2027, to avoid any unnecessary expense.”

Meanwhile, Ribble Valley Borough Council leader Simon Hore said a quick conclusion to the SCO process would benefit voters as much as local authorities.

“We have a highly experienced and efficient elections team - and don’t envisage any additional expense from the elections - but the sooner there is clarity around the new shadow authorities the better, so that we can inform our residents accordingly in the lead up to the elections,” Cllr Hore said.

Mark Davies, the returning officer responsible for elections at Lancaster City Council, said: “The timing of the structural changes order is a matter for government and we will work to the timetable set out by MHCLG. Our immediate focus is on delivering the annual electoral registration canvass, which is an important statutory process ahead of next May’s elections to the shadow authority.”

The MHCLG did not respond to requests for comment about the issues raised. The government is also drawing up more than a dozen other SCOs for similar shake-ups happening concurrently in other parts of England on the same timeline.

The contents of the order for Lancashire - including the wards for each of the new councils - is expected to be published in the coming weeks, even though its Parliamentary passage will take far longer.

The calls for certainty come after the on-off saga that surrounded the local elections in Lancashire this year, when the seven council areas with scheduled contests saw them cancelled by the government - again, because of the limited shelf life of those authorities - before they were reinstated following a legal challenge by Reform UK.

The cancellation of the polls for the existing councils in 2027 means that those authorities that were due to elect a third of their members that year - Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Chorley, Hyndburn, Pendle, Preston and West Lancashire, which hold elections three years in every four - will see the four-year terms of those councillors up for election increased by almost a year until their authorities are abolished.

The same extension will apply to all councillors on those authorities which were due to elect their entire memberships in 2027 as part of their pattern of staging elections one year out of every four - namely, Blackpool, Fylde, Lancaster, Ribble Valley, Rossendale, South Ribble and Wyre.

Neither Lancashire County Council nor Rossendale Council were due to hold a vote next year, even if they were not being axed. County Hall’s next scheduled poll would have been in 2029 and Rossendale’s in 2028.

All of 13 Lancashire councils with elections due in 2027 were approached for comment.