Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans the Government has for the formation of a Pennine Lancashire unitary authority.

It is for those in the area to consider whether a Pennine Lancashire unitary authority would be the best way forward, as my Rt Hon Friend, the then Secretary of State, told the House on 22 July 2019 (HCWS1790). If the area requests that we formally invite councils to submit a proposal for such an authority, we would do so if that request demonstrates local opinion is coalescing around a single unitary option for the area, which would be likely to meet our publicly announced criteria for unitarisation.