Notes from the North: Houchen and Farage get pally and the potential cancellation of elections
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Not content with the hallowed scalp of Robert Jenrick, Reform UK leader has his eyes on a Teesside heavyweight as his next high-profile defection.
For that is exactly what Lord Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, would represent.
He has said the quiet part loud in recent times when he indicated he believes that, in the long term, he expects the Tories and Reform to merge. Although at present speed, there may be little left to merge with.
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Nigel Farage attempting to get Ben Houchen to defect
Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen met with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage before Christmas, as the latter attempts to woo the most senior directly-elected Conservative to his own party.
The Financial Times reports Houchen was approached by Reform last year, before a meeting was held with Farage and a staff member in mid-December.
After Robert Jenrick’s defection last week the staff member once again approached Lord Houchen, saying Farage wanted to meet him for lunch.
Lord Houchen told the FT he had no plans to change allegiance, saying: “I’ve always been a Conservative. Loyalty is important to me.”
Party leaders accused of trying to dodge scrutiny in asking for elections to be cancelled
The row over whether local elections should go ahead this year continues with all ruling parties - including Reform UK - accused of trying to dodge public scrutiny.
The government invited the 63 English councils with elections due this year – and which are also set to be abolished in 2028 as a result of a shake-up ordered by ministers – the chance to request what they described as the “postponement” of the planned polls.
The Reform UK leader of Lancashire County Council – which is not one of the authorities where elections are due in May – last week wrote to the government to set out County Hall’s “strong view that these elections should not be cancelled”. The authority backed, by a majority, a motion on the subject back in November.
But that argument is complicated by the fact that he also put his name to a letter to government in October asking that local government reorganisation be delayed until 2029 and 2030. If that were to happen, the elected councillors at Lancashire County Council would also likely see a delay in when they next faced the voters for a verdict on their performance.
Decision looms for children’s A&E plan
Health bosses will announce the outcome of a consultation on the future of Southport’s A&E services in the coming weeks.
As first reported by The Southport Lead in July, NHS leaders want to locate both children’s and adults’ A&E departments in a single location rather than the current setup where one each is located at Southport and Ormskirk.
Named Shaping Care Together, a long-running programme was set up to examine how to make services more efficient across the two hospitals and bring down running costs while improving health outcomes. That led to the plan to co-locate the services and potentially bring paediatric A&E services back to the town more than two decades after they were lost.
A consultation on the plan was held last year, during which it was made clear that the preferred option was locating both services together at Southport. According to forecasts for each option, locating both at the Southport site would be quicker, significantly cheaper and cause less disruption than if Ormskirk was chosen.
A Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC) from Sefton Council and Lancashire County Council met at Southport Town Hall yesterday and heard that a report outlining the outcome of the consultation will be published in early February.
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