Meeting on possible elected Mayor for Lancashire
The county is seeking £1bn of extra funding over the next 30 years in return for agreeing to the post
Last updated 23rd Mar 2026
A crunch meeting is set to take place, which could finally put Lancashire on the path to an elected mayor, with the county seeking £1bn of extra funding over the next 30 years in return for agreeing to the post.
The leaders of Lancashire County Council, Blackpool Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council will hold talks with devolution minister Miatta Fahnbulleh, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) can reveal.
The discussion, which was originally planned for Tuesday, but is now being re-scheduled, is likely to revolve around a series of requests made by the trio of local politicians in a letter to the government regarding the next steps in Lancashire’s devolution journey.
In that unpublished correspondence, which was sent shortly before Christmas and has now been obtained by the LDRS, the leaders committed to exploring “the principle” of a mayor-led system for Lancashire.
However, what they described as their willingness to “engage positively” over the subject was set out as being “contingent” on confirmation of the funding that would come with the Andy-Burnham-type figurehead, the timescale for the introduction of the role and the outcome of a public consultation into the change.
The three also formally floated the idea, previously mooted by Lancashire County Council’s Reform UK leader Stephen Atkinson late last year, of Lancashire being able to access that mayoral finance before the new, all-powerful politician is actually in place.
County Cllr Atkinson, a longstanding opponent of elected mayors as part of the devolution process, and the pro-mayor Labour leaders of Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen councils, Lynn Williams and Phil Riley, sit together at the helm of the Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA) as the heads of its constituent councils.
The organisation was established just over a year ago to oversee the implementation of Lancashire’s existing devolution deal. The agreement did not include a mayor, a prospect which has proved politically controversial in the county throughout what is now a decade of wrangling between all 15 Lancashire councils over the subject.
Devolution is the process by which local areas are handed powers that were previously the preserve of central government and funding to go with their new responsibilities.
The letter sent to the government in December was the latest response to a ministerial demand for the LCCA to bring forward plans for “deeper” devolution, widely interpreted as code for moving to a mayoral model and securing the additional powers that the post would bring.
The leaders of the three so-called ‘top tier’ councils in Lancashire, in their roles as constituent members of the LCCA, resolved in October to consider introducing a mayor, but only if “clear and substantial benefits” could be demonstrated by the government beforehand.
County Cllr Atkinson was particularly keen to establish exactly how much additional funding would come Lancashire’s way if it took the mayoral route favoured by ministers.
In response, Ms Fahnbulleh stressed that a commitment to mayoral authority funding being delivered over a 30-year period was laid down in legislation, but would not be drawn on specifics. She said the amount available to Lancashire would be “subject to further decisions following consideration of the Combined County Authority’s proposal to pursue mayoral devolution”.
In their December correspondence, the LCCA members once again attempted to secure a government commitment to a precise figure for a Lancashire mayoral ‘investment fund’, stating that their “fiscal assumption is that this would be in excess of £1bn, or circa £36m per annum, when gauged against those which have been agreed for other new or emerging Mayoral Strategic Authorities”.
They also noted in other areas working towards an elected mayor that the government now wanted the new role introduced only after completion of any separate changes to streamline the local council set-up in those places. Lancashire is poised to undergo such an overhaul in April 2028, when its existing 15 local authorities will be abolished and replaced with an as-yet-undetermined smaller number of councils.
Against that backdrop and the resultant minimum two-year wait for any elected mayor that is ultimately agreed for Lancashire, the LCCA says it believes there is “merit in releasing 50 percent of any mayoral investment to Lancashire earlier in the process in order to create new opportunities to maximise the benefit of existing resources, with the balance available in full when a mayor is in place”.
The letter also highlights what its authors describe as “the unique position which Lancashire now faces regarding reduced levels of capital investment and combined authority capacity funding, as one of only two non-mayoral CCAs in the country”.
The politicians state that the situation “will continue to limit our ability to develop and create the right conditions for future growth” and contrast the £1m in capacity cash allocated to the LCCA by the government with the £4m pledged over the next three years to six areas that have committed to a mayor as part of the ‘devolution priority programme’.
Meanwhile, on the subject of a public consultation over an elected mayor for Lancashire, the LCCA members state their desire to “ensure that the views of Lancashire’s residents and stakeholders are fully considered”.
All of the issues in the letter are expected to be on the table during the forthcoming meeting – which is also to be attended by the chief executives of the LCCA’s constituent councils – when the government will give its first indication of a response to Lancashire’s requests.
The county is currently the only part of the North of England neither to have an elected mayor nor be formally en route to getting one. However, legislation currently progressing through Parliament gives the government the power to impose the role on an area, without local agreement, once a non-mayoral combined county authority has been in place for 18 months, that being August, in Lancashire’s case.
County Cllr Atkinson told the LDRS back in November that he believes a mayor actually “centralises power” and so is at odds with the essence of devolution. He also said he wanted Lancashire to “understand exactly what we will get” out of the arrangement before signing up to it.
However, Cllr Riley said it would be “insane for Lancashire to end up being the only place in the North of England that doesn’t have a mayoral authority – it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever”.
Cllr Williams added that the county was “missing opportunities” by not being led by a mayor – and that it had “a lot of catching up to…do” with Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region.