Councillor David Westley, leader of the Conservative Group on West Lancs Borough Council, has launched two new Conservative policy initiatives to help tackle the borough's long-standing flooding and drainage issues.

The first - the establishment of an Internal Drainage Board; initial steps were taken in 2019 when a Conservative Motion was approved by WLBC to set up a cross party Flooding and Drainage Working Group.

After an initial delay due to Covid19, good progress has been made with a remarkable degree of cross-party consensus. A programme of meetings has been arranged and to date these have included discussions with the Environment Agency and the Association of Drainage Authorities. Further meetings are planned with representatives of local Flood Groups, agricultural and other interested parties. The Working Group will make a set of proposals that will then be considered by the Cabinet.

The second element proposes changes to the use of the money raised by WLBC from the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) which developers pay on new housing.

At present up to 25% of the Levy is spent in the local area and the remainder goes into the WLBC Strategic Fund that can be spent anywhere in the Borough.

Conservatives want to (a) change the rules so that much more of the funding is spent in the area where it is raised, for the benefit of local residents and (b) widen the current restriction on how it can be used to include improvements to the local drainage network and roads. This would allow the CIL to be used as matched funding for joint projects with United Utilities and Lancashire County Council, the highway authority, to achieve much needed infrastructure investment.

Katherine Fletcher, MP for the West Lancashire North Division and Councillor Westley are pictured in Banks where they discussed local drainage issues.