Last ditch attempt to save Southport Area Committee

At Thursday’s Sefton Council meeting Southport’s former MP and newly elected Lib Dem Council Group leader, John Pugh is leading an attempt to retain Sefton Council’s three area committees and specifically the Southport Area Committee. 

Cllr Pugh argues that such a move to get rid of the one committee that exists to deal with Southport’s concerns is both legally questionable and malicious. 

“There is no evidence of public support for this move amongst the public of Southport or the councillors who represent them,” says Cllr Pugh. 

“On the contrary the public want a bigger voice for Southport and more locally-based decision making. That’s why the area committees were set up in the first place because of a widespread unhappiness that the concerns of Southport were being lost in the muddle of a wider Merseyside merger. They were set up in response to a local government boundary report that identified this unhappiness as the feeling in Southport.”

“Now Labour are proposing that these important area committees should be casually got rid off in the middle of a council year.  A cynic might observe that the Southport Area Committee is the only Council committee not totally controlled by the ruling Sefton Labour group.”