A meeting is being held to discuss whether it's time to say goodbye to Lincolnshire's district councils
The Lib Dems on the City of Lincoln council have brought forward a motion raising concerns about a national shake up, which could see all areas have just one council
Plans to redraw Lincolnshire’s political map are moving forwards – and could divide the county for the first time in half a century.
Since the last major local government reorganisation in 1974, Lincolnshire has had both an ‘upper tier’ county council and ‘lower tier’ districts and boroughs.
Now the government is hoping to resort the country into larger, single-tier authorities – sometimes nicknamed ‘mega councils’, which it hopes would be both simpler and cheaper.
However, this could spell the end of a united Lincolnshire.
Tonight a City of Lincoln council meeting debated a motion criticising the idea of ditching the district councils which is being backed by Lib Dem councillor Martin Christopher:
"What we've seen with regards to the county council which is predominantly made up of councillors from rural village and town areas is that they quite often miss the mark when it comes to the very unique needs of Lincoln"
But those in favour say local councillors would still be able to feedback concerns to a larger authority.
The government’s White Paper says that it wants to create councils with a population of 500,000 or more – although it goes on to say there “may be exceptions to ensure new structures make sense for an area, including for devolution”.
Lincolnshire has a population of around 770,000 according to the last census in 2021.
This puts it in an awkward middle ground of being too unwieldy to be a single council, and too small to be split on its own.
Its obvious partners are its neighbours of North Lincolnshire Council and North East Lincolnshire Council, who it is embarking on devolution with.
They have around 170,000 and 160,000 residents respectively, giving the whole area a population of 1.1 million people.
Although the government is open to allowing single unitary councils for devolved areas, this seems impractical for such a vast geographic area.
Scunthorpe and Grimsby in the north seem to have little in common with Stamford and Market Deeping in the south.
It would take nearly two hours to drive from top to bottom – a journey of more than 90 miles.