The chief executives of Cumbria’s two new councils, which replace the county’s existing seven local authorities next week, met with businesses to brief them on the reorganisation and pledged that there would be an improvement in the planning system.
Andrew Seekings, chief executive of Cumberland Council, and Sam Plum, chief executive of Westmorland and Furness Council were speaking at the LA23NET business network and took part in a Q&A session with around 70 businesspeople from around the county.
One of the hot topics discussed was the frustration felt by many businesses about the delays in the planning process, said to be holding back developments.
Ms Plum admitted that the current planning departments were all suboptimal, but said the merger would create a large team with opportunities to specialise and improve the service.
Mr Seekings said that Cumberland had decided to have one planning committee for the whole area that would take a strategic view. Westmorland and Furness will have three planning committees.
Both chief executives said their focus was on ensuring that there was a smooth transition to the new councils, but they were ambitious to improve Cumbria and make the most of working in new ways once all services were part of the same authority.
Ms Plum said: “It is really important for me to get out and about and meet business from across Cumbria and in particular Westmorland and Furness to start to think about how we can start to do things differently from April 1.”
Mr Seekings said: “Hopefully for residents it will be much easier to navigate the system and once we have integrated the services we can focus on getting better outcomes. This event has been an opportunity to set out what our plan looks like and listen to people about what their priorities are.”
A lively question and answer session at the LA23NET event at Rheged also saw Mr Seekings describe Carlisle as ‘an underperforming city that should be more like York’ and Ms Plum explain how her council would focus on building ‘thriving communities’.
Both leaders agreed that Cumbria would still exist after April 1 in a ceremonial sense with many important institutions such as the police and university carrying its name. And they both pledged to meet with Cumbria Deaf Association to discuss better support for British Sign Language use in their areas.
John Haley, commercial partner at Edwin Thompson, one of the sponsors of LA23NET, said: “It was good to get an insight from the chief executives about the reorganisation and hear that improving planning will be one of the priorities. Economic development was also a hot topic and I was able to raise with them the lack of good commercial property opportunities and available development land in Cumbria.
“It is a big issue for a lot of local businesses looking to expand and hampering our ability to attract new companies to the area.”
The LA23NET gathering is the latest in a series of networking events organised around the county for businesses to meet, enjoy good food and get to grips with important issues.
Organiser Helen Statham, of Intro PR, said: “A lot of important issues were raised during the questions – everything from supporting diverse communities to working with small businesses.
“It seemed that the chief executives were really taking note of the concerns raised by businesses and it was good to hear their optimism that this reorganisation is an opportunity to reset our priorities in the county and make some real changes.”
