Commission of the Future of Public Services in Chorley
SESSION 4
Panel Members: Steve Broomhead (Chair), David Fillingham, Becky Booth, Neil
McInroy, Peter Colclough and John Diamond
Fourth Evidence Gathering Session:





Chris Kenny and John Buck – Lancashire Fire and Rescue Services
Janet Hodgson – Runshaw College
Tim Mansfield and Sam Nicol – Healthier Lancashire
Councillor Alan Whittaker
Donna Hussain – community member
Chris Kenny and John Buck:
Chris and John both explained that they provided fire and rescue services on behalf of the
Lancashire Combined Fire Authority to the one-and-a-half million people living or working in
Lancashire. Operating from thirty-nine fire stations across the county, they have a service
headquarters at Fulwood in Preston and a training centre at Euxton. There are currently two
fire engines based at Chorley
Their remit is to make Lancashire Safer and this defines the overall purpose they are
working to achieve. They are increasingly working with a variety of partners including local
authorities, police, health care trusts and care providers to bring about better results than
could be achieved by working by ourselves. The range of community safety risk is extensive
and changing quickly, requiring the service to allocate resources on the basis of risk and
reducing risk as far as possible. To this extent the Fire Service focus their efforts on
prevention, protection and response.
The Service effectively reduce the threat of fire in the home by carrying out thousands of
Home Fire Safety Checks each year. This free service is open to anyone living in Lancashire
and includes advising people on what to do to take to make their home safer from fire and
how to survive if a fire happens. In order to achieve this they work quite closely with Chorley
Council and other partner organisations particularly within the neighbourhoods and housing
teams.
In the past the fire service concentrated on super output areas but they have recognised the
need for change and are now more focused on achieving targets at local level. However,
they talked about the fire authority responding differently in an effort to save money and
explained how the preferred Scottish model would mean a North West footprint that may
hinder what Chorley Council was trying to achieve.
Good engagement is about face to face contact that builds relations and trust and they
talked about how the leadership at this authority is more visibly present than others.
Strategic aims can be difficult to achieve and sustain when partners did not want to work
together and some organisations won’t engage if their objective is not the same, for
example, a reluctance to get involved with a project that is aimed at people below the age of
65. They also talked about the frustrations of organisations not sharing vital data and some
negotiations had broken down due to organisational language barriers. The police recently
brought in new Anti-Social Behaviour powers around prevention but did not consult with the
Fire Authority who has a wealth of experience in this area. This was surely a missed
opportunity.
The Chorley Public Services Reform Board is moving partnership working to another level,
by working with Chorley Council they have been able to contribute by sharing its assets. The
recent re-development of the Euxton site has freed up half of the station that can be offered
to other partner organisations for their use as and when required.
There is a public stereotype of men in a red fire engine riding through the streets to rescue a
damsel in distress. This needs to be changed. If they took a fire engine away, there would be
a public outcry but the work that is done on a preventative level ultimately saves more lives.
Janet Hodgson:
Established as a sixth form college in 1974, Runshaw has grown over the last forty years
into a thriving community meeting the needs of learners from across the region at its three
centres. The college provides a sixth form centre in Leyland offering a wide range of A-levels
and Vocational programmes.
We also provide education for adult students from Basic Skills to Higher Education at our
two adult centres in Euxton and Chorley. Our Chorley centre also has vocational facilities
that are used by learners of all ages. Our Business Centre delivers training and development
programmes and work based training to hundreds of businesses across the North West.
The college also provides a range of additional support services to its students aside from
the general academic based support that can include picking up social services based
issues including mental health, counselling and sometimes crisis support, including visits to
hospital. They also provide free college meals to around 300 students and run their own
student food bank. The college however would like to see greater provision of activities for
young people as they feel that they losing students to other areas.
Janet also mentioned that other areas such as Wigan, Blackburn and Blackpool have a more
cohesive response to student issues and needs. Lancashire has a disjointed approach and
with a reluctance to share information across various organisations and complex authority
structures the college are constantly met with preventative barriers rather than working
cohesively to solve problems.
The college has a real sense of collaborative working with Chorley Council. From a positive
point of view, the college has 4,500 students that are keen to get involved with volunteer
work and working in the community which could be developed upon and are working with
employers to promote and sustain economic viability for young people. The College are
currently funding the provision of a new Science and Engineering Innovation Centre (SEIC)
at its Euxton Lane site that will accommodate up to 400 new students across a wide range of
engineering and science courses to complement our current provisions, including
apprenticeships at all levels, to career degrees. The College is working with Chorley to
ensure that its students are equipped with the right skills sets to gain work in this area or
neighbouring authorities.
Tim Mansfield and Sam Nicol
Lancashire is a diverse area with some of the most deprived communities in England and a
few of the more affluent. This social and economic diversity is reflected in local health
outcomes with the people of Lancashire not being as healthy as they should be. The
demand for health and social care services in Lancashire is growing as the population ages
and as people with ill health require more care. It is difficult to meet this increased demand
because adult social care, community services and hospitals do not work together as
effectively as they could.
Tim and Sam explained that the Healthier Lancashire programme aims to significantly
improve health and social care outcomes for the people of Lancashire and to radically
change the way in which health and social care services are delivered.
The programme is guided by some key objectives that include achieving fundamental and
measureable improvements in health outcomes, reducing health inequalities in Lancashire,
and ensuring greater focus on health prevention, early intervention and self-care and to
make maximum use of new technology.
It was explained that we need to encourage people to take their health seriously and assume
greater responsibility for their own health and that by developing robust integrated care
services across Lancashire, it would in turn reduce the reliance on acute hospital-based
services and enhance the role of the third sector to support mainstream services. The
establishment of a joint leadership approach across the whole of Lancashire’s entire health
and social care system is essential.
The Lancashire Health community comprises eight Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s),
more than 200 GP practices. Five acute NHS hospital Trusts, a health and wellbeing Trust
and a single speciality learning disability Trust. Social Care is provided for by Lancashire
County Council and the two unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool. In
addition there is an active third sector supporting health and social care and within the whole
of this community there is a growing sense of urgency around the need for change.
A clear campaign, with measurable objectives is needed in order to achieve the right results
for Lancashire and would be dependent on the development of a Strategic Plan. Other large
scale change programmes including Healthier Together in Greater Manchester have used a
similar Strategic Plan as an essential tool to improve the planning and execution of activities
to deliver agreed outcomes. There is a need to show how the programme relates to the
needs of each of the public sector partners and if properly implemented it should lead to
better decision-making and quicker decisions. The Healthier Lancashire process plan and
governance structure has been developed to include all health and social care services in
Lancashire including children’s services and mental health services.
The delivery of the Strategic Plan will require actions and activities to be driven across three
complementary workstreams:
 Cultural Transformation
 Care Professionals
 Digital Technologies
The Lancashire Leadership Forum has indicated its desire to act and behave differently in
order to achieve these changes and all have now signed up and taken on actions within the
plan.
In response to a question from the Commission, the possibility of developing a Plan that was
specific to Chorley was discussed as a viable option to achieve and deliver better outcomes
for its residents.
Councillor Alan Whittaker:
Councillor Whittaker explained that he had 26 years’ experience of being a Borough
Councillor; he had also been a County Councillor in the past and had been a Parish Clerk for
28 years. Over this time, Local Government had changed considerably. Councillor Whittaker
commented that he had become a councillor to improve services for his residents and even
though the budget constraints had become greater, he did not believe that Chorley obtaining
unitary status was the way to achieve these improvements in the future, stating that given its
current size, the authority would not be able to provide the range of services that the people
needed.
He was not against the merging of authorities or working together and sharing good practice.
Councillor Whittaker also commented that he did not want this authority to end up like
Blackburn Council which seemed to be a partnership with Capita, rather than a complete
unitary authority. Another scenario that would also be worse in his opinion was a north; east,
west and south divide of Lancashire and shared the view of Central Government that the
restructuring of Local Government was too costly and disruptive.
Councillor Whittaker realised that his views were not shared by the rest of his party and had
indeed been whipped by his group, receiving a one month ban for opposing the proposal to
pursue unitary status at the Council meeting.
Councillor Whittaker doesn’t believe that the current system is terribly flawed and that if the
existing three tier system was run properly they could function together effectively. At local
level, the first port of call is often the Parish Council and people feel that they can effectively
contribute at this level.
Any decision would need to have the full support of all the Elected Members of the Council
and that democratically if people wanted it to happen then it would. However he did accept
that there needed to be some change and that a different mind-set maybe what was needed.
He also added that there was a lot of expertise both at Chorley and Lancashire and that if
any new arrangement could improve services then that would be beneficial for the residents
of Chorley. However, he could not see this happening in the next ten years and thought that
Chorley’s current answer could just be a staging post to something different in the future.
Councillor Whittaker added that there are still a large number of people who do have the
means or willingness to access IT systems and that this needed to be considered for the
future.
Donna Hussain
Donna explained her background, as a resident of Clayton Brook, and gave some context to
one of the most deprived wards in the borough, with issues caused by demographic
changes, long term unemployment and poor qualification levels. These issues led to poor
outcomes such as high infant mortality rates.
Clayton Brook has a community house which delivered services to local people. Around
three years ago, it was at risk of closing down, and local people worked together to save it.
Donna undertook a skills audit and asset-based approach to look at how to improve things in
the house. The change of administration in the council led to greater engagement of the
council, with the support of the ward Councillor. There were issues with the physical assets
of the area; the community centre and pub were dilapidated. There were no community
meeting points and no social interaction. The council provided a green space, and the
community group put on activities and events which encouraged community involvement.
Donna’s suggestion to the commission was that to reform public services, the public service
reform board should be accountable, and feed into parish councils and partnership working
at a local level. Accountability needs to be developed at all levels.
Donna felt that the time for a unitary council for Chorley was now, and that people needed to
be more involved in the development and delivery of services, using an asset based
approach.
The Commission thanked Chris Kenny, John Buck, Janet Hodgson, Tim Mansfield, Sam
Nicol, Councillor Whittaker and Donna Hussain for their contributions.