Lichfield District Council's offices. Pic: Lichfield District Council

The future governance of Lichfield and Burntwood could fall under a new combined authority, according to the leader of Lichfield District Council.

Lichfield District Council leader Mike Wilcox
Lichfield District Council leader Mike Wilcox

The Government is already offering incentives to some areas in the shape of regional powers and financial packages.

Cllr Mike Wilcox, the leader of Lichfield District Council, said he hoped other alternatives might be an option in future, but warned the local authority couldn’t ignore the debate and assume its future independence was guaranteed.

He said: “All the talk is about combined authorities and we will have to have that dialogue with Staffordshire County Council and others to ask if we are going to copy Manchester and Birmingham in Staffordshire in order to create a combined authority.

“If we don’t have those discussions we will get picked off and the government will come in and tell us we’re going to be part of somewhere like Greater Birmingham whether we like it or not.”

Lichfield District Council had previously put forward a proposal with local authorities in Cannock, Tamworth and East Staffordshire, only for the Government to decide the scale of the area was not large enough.

But while Cllr Wilcox believes the discussions need to be had, he has called for greater evidence about how a combined authority would work.

“In Manchester, George Osborne has promised all sorts of powers and money,” he said. “It looks attractive but we don’t know how a combined authority will really work.

“There is talk of a ‘super mayor’ but there’s no real concrete detail on what that actually means.

“For Lichfield and Burntwood, we need information from the Government about what will happen to Lichfield in a combined authority. Do we lose all the powers we currently have and the control over services? Do we lose councillors? Do we just have one set of councillors for all of Staffordshire?

“We don’t know this detail at the moment and that’s the problem.”

Founder of Lichfield Live and editor of the site.