11:00 Cat Smith (Labour)

The Bay offers a positive vision of investment, skills and jobs growth, tackling the climate emergency, and protecting and enhancing natural resources, infrastructure such as roads, flood defences and housing, and services that meet real need across adult and children’s services. The Bay area has 13,000 businesses, with 18,000 jobs in advanced manufacturing, 4,300 in agriculture and 25,000 in tourism and hospitality. Some 30 million people visit Lancaster and south Cumbria, contributing £2 billion to the economy. It has five major wind farms, oil and gas operations, and two major nuclear power stations. It also has two universities, both already effectively co-operating across the Bay.

Local government reorganisation must be about more than rearranging the deckchairs. On issues such as social care, public health, climate change and youth services, more of the same will not be good enough. The Department commissioned a research report from Cardiff University that concluded that size is not a detriment with respect to performance, and the implications for performance should be evaluated in the context of the reform proposed for each local area. The Bay is a chance to shake things up and to do things differently, on a geographic footprint that makes sense for services and local people.

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