Chorley local elections 2023: The Big Debate - the borough's top politicians on the issues that matter at this year's poll

You can watch the full debate in the video player above or read highlights from the event in the article below.

To be invited to take part, a party had to be contesting at least a third of the seats up for grabs at the polls. This year, Labour and the Conservatives are standing candidates in all wards, the Green Party in 13, the Liberal Democrats in five and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in one – and you can find local manifestos from all of the political groups here.

However, for the debate, local democracy reporter Paul Faulkner was joined by Cllr Alistair Bradley (Labour leader of Chorley Council), Cllr Alan Cullens (Conservative opposition group leader) and Andy Hunter-Rossall (co-ordinator for the borough’s Green Party).

Here's some of what they had to say on the topics that came up for discussion:

HOUSEBUILDING

Chorley Council last year lost a series of appeals against decisions it had made to refuse planning permission for developments on several plots of land which the authority had wanted to safeguard from housebuilding for the foreseeable future. The borough is currently working with neighbouring Preston and South Ribble to create the first ever Central Lancashire local plan, which will enable the trio to revisit a deal which previously allowed them to pool their minimum new housing targets and redistribute them according to what each district needed - an arrangement which has often been unpicked by planning inspectors. A public consultation on a draft of the plan - and suggested sites for development - took place earlier this year, and others will follow.

ALISTAIR BRADLEY

"The blame for this sits fairly and squarely with the Conservative government in Westminster, which for years has ignored Chorley's special circumstances - [namely that] we have delivered so much housing on Buckshaw Village and in South West Chorley, but also in Clayton-le-Woods and other communities. Chorley - mainly because Buckshaw had a high housing delivery number over the last 15 years - [has now] been given an even higher number by the government, which is, frankly, ridiculous. So the more we eat into the land we have allocated, the more we have to find more land.

"So the very real risk at the moment, because of government policy, is that we'll have to end up going into the greenbelt. Chorley Conservatives are putting it on their leaflets that they're against housebuilding, [but] they are [risking] with their policy development in the greenbelt. Surprisingly, [the government] have allowed Oxford and other places down south to have a relaxation on the rules, but not for Chorley. I wonder why."

ALAN CULLENS

"One of the things [Alistair] said that I think was disingenuous is that we're against housebuilding. We're not, we're for housebuilding - the right houses in the right place. And our concern has been for many years - and probably because the local plan is so long overdue...[is] it is puts pressure on sites in places such as Clayton-le-Woods. I think...that there is an opportunity - I think the government do need to change tack, I'm not going to disagree with Alistair on this. I think we have been put under some pressure by government targets. But it's about the right houses in the right place.

"One of the things that we requested [for the consultation] was down to [changing] one word within the [draft] plan - and that was 'preferred' options [regarding the suggested site list]. And I think this has come back to bite us already…because developers are seeing the word 'preferred' as the opportunity to go and develop."

ALISTAIR BRADLEY

"'Preferred sites' is the government term laid out by their planning [rules] which says you either have preferred sites or you have open sites, so every site in Chorley would then be available. So it's not {Labour's or the council's] preferred sites, we'd have preferred to have a far shorter list.”

ANDY HUNTER-ROSSALL

"I think [it's] a sensible approach [to work with Preston and South Ribble] - we've over-delivered in the past with Buckshaw [and now] there's other parts of Central Lancashire that want to over-deliver in future. So let's pool our resource there. In terms of the local plan, I have spent a lot of time scrutinising the current draft - and there was some really good stuff in there in the ambitions in the text and...wanting 15-minute communities...people to live within a short walking or cycling distance...of their local amenities. Unfortunately, what we saw is that the actual [suggested] site allocations didn't live up to the ambitions that were in the accompanying text.

"There's places like Little Knowley, which is going to get hundreds and hundreds of additional houses, but that is not going to get the additional amenities to go with [them] - there aren't going to be new schools, new doctors surgeries around there. There's places...in Chorley South West where it's two miles to the nearest shop from some recently-built homes and some new sites that are allocated in the local plan. There are a lot of councils around the country which are revisiting the idea of councils building homes - not just purely relying on developers - which gets around that issue of there [being] brownfield sites which developers do not want to develop."

ALAN CULLENS

"We've looked at certain sites in the town centre and they will be perfect for this. I know [the council has] a policy at the moment to purchase a number of houses. But I don't think they fit within that brownfield context."

COUNCIL FINANCES

The council is now generating significant income from the various pieces of real estate which it has purchased in recent years - including £847,000 a year from the Market Walk Shopping Centre and £455,000 from Logistics House in Buckshaw Village, according to this year’s budget papers. But it has also had to borrow to pay for them - and by 2025/26, it expects to be paying £4.6m in borrowing costs, 21 percent of its day-to-day budget. The issue has long been a bone of contention between Labour and the Conservatives - but isn't the income from the properties it has bought now keeping the council afloat?

ALAN CULLENS

“I’d probably agree with that, currently. [But] I think we've got a scenario whereby we [are] the third-largest borrowing council in Lancashire, we've got debt in excess of £60m and increasing. And we're in a scenario whereby interest rates are rising [and] the property is getting harder to fill in some areas. I think one of the issues that really is of great concern is that rental incomes are dropping…and especially in town centres, around shops. So are we confident that that is going to continue? We've always said, we should be controlling debt - I don't think it's sustainable that we can carry on in [this] way."

ALISTAIR BRADLEY

"But the revenue [we're generating] is after we've paid the borrowing costs. So the money we're talking about is clear profit - so that nearly 20 percent of our budget now is profit we make on commercial operations. That is using Chorley's money to generate benefit, because most of those investments don't just generate money, So if it's a GP surgery [we have built], you can get yourself a GP [more easily]. And that debt is manageable - [it] is a bit like a mortgage. We've borrowed to do things, we borrowed to give [residents] services - and we're paying that debt down...[it]is reducing all the time."

ANDY HUNTER-ROSSALL

"I'm happy that the council has diversified its income. It was previously just completely at the whims of national government funding, as well as council tax funding. [With] national government funding, there's not been any security in it and it's chopped and changed over the years, which has led to, in different areas of the country, different levels of drastic cuts. Actually, Chorley Council now have taken some control over their own future by investing in things which are going to generate an income. So I'm completely comfortable with that."

ENVIRONMENT

Chorley Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and wants the borough to be carbon neutral by 2030 - but is that the local authority itself or the district as a whole? And is it moving fast enough either way?

ANDY HUNTER-ROSSALL

"The [council's climate change] strategy included a lot of actions to create more detailed strategies by 2024. So we're obviously expecting to see a lot next year. But, personally, I think this is all far too slow - there's houses being built now, there's a local plan going through now [and] all these things need to work together with the climate strategy. And if the climate strategy is just kind of getting to the stage - five years after the council declared the climate emergency - where we're only just starting to see detail in 2024, that's not good enough. And one of the things I think it is failing on most is that wider engagement with the other polluters in the borough and just with the general public as well. So [if it can] make its town hall, carbon neutral [by 2030], great. But [if] it's not engaging with…other people..the borough is not going to get anywhere - it needs to show leadership to them as well."

ALISTAIR BRADLEY

"It's difficult to do…establishing a baseline and then setting [targets] from that baseline. The government have set some parameters around how you measure - the government have their preferred ways, some of the climate change groups have different ways of doing it; and we have signed up to a couple of groups who do it in different ways. So we are producing that data, it obviously has a bit of a lag before it goes into the public domain, because it has to be audited. That is in flight…that's started. I think there are…things we can directly impact, which I think we're doing okay on, things that we indirectly impact, and some things that we just have no impact on at all. So [the latter] is the national stuff around the motorways...because the biggest carbon contributors to Chorley are the M61 and M6 to be quite blunt with you. On the things that we can directly [influence], we are making fairly good progress."

ALAN CULLENS

"It's quite interesting [to claim] that Chorley will be carbon neutral by 2030. I think the council can have a large influence on that, but I don't think it can actually…say all of Chorley will be. We proposed [a] motion, which Alistair kindly agreed to, which was that we sign up to the City Race To Zero, …[that’s] as a way of ensuring that…those targets are actually made public [and] the progress towards [achieving them]. At the moment, I've not seen anything come from that, even though we've actually signed up to City Race To Zero. I think it's important we get those targets in place and we get the plans in place. One of the things that has been suggested [by the council] - and we describe it as an eco-gimmick - is to have bus stops which are going to [have] planted roofs that are going to attract the bees, at a cost of £15,000 each."

ALISTAIR BRADLEY

"There [is] a programme [over] the next five years to replace almost all the bus shelters or upgrade [them] across Chorley - those that we own and operate. [As part] of that, there was an aspiration to build some...green corridors, because in some of our areas… there is not a lot of green space and you need hopping off points for insects. We will not be paying £15,000 for a shelter. That was the initial estimate from the suppliers, because, to be honest, they are coining it in.

ANDY HUNTER-ROSSALL

"I think one thing that happens a lot with Chorley Council [is that] it seems to conflate climate change with all other green issues. And when you say, 'What are you doing on climate change?', it says 'Green bus shelters.' But then when you say, 'Well, they're not doing very much for climate change,' they say, 'No, they're not - they're doing something for biodiversity.'"