TOWN Hall chiefs look set to decide Warrington should bid for city status – despite some evidence that a significant proportion of the population is against the idea.
Warrington Borough Council’s cabinet will be recommended next week to submit an application to the Civic Honours competition for city status, as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
A report to be presented to the cabinet by leader of the council Russ Bowden admits that risks identified include local public opposition to the application. A survey has been carried out to ascertain the strength of public support and opposition.
There was unanimous support in favour of the application across the public, voluntary and business sectors.
But an online survey in which respondents were asked to rate their agreement with the predicted benefits of city status showed an overall leaning against. An analysis of the responses showed, however, that people under 25 were more likely to agree or strongly agree with the benefits of city status, those aged over 55 were more likely to disagree or strongly disagree.
When asked about Warrington as a place, younger people were again more likely to acknowledge the town’s qualities than older people.
A total of 548 open text responses were received, the majority of which were “negative” towards the city status application, followed by “neutral” and then “positive.”
In addition, two petitions have been started by a member of the public, one seeking views on an application for city status and the second asking the council to abandon work on the application and adding: “For the avoidance of doubt, we’re happy that Warrington remains a town.”
This petition is open until December 15 and by October 26 had attracted 224 signatures.
Clr Bowden’s report notes that the 1,005 responses to the online survey represented less than half a percent of the population.
It recommends the cabinet to approve the submission of an application for city status because it provides a rare opportunity for the town to build on its strengths, and would formally recognise Warrington’s existing profile in the North West and further afield. It should be noted that the opportunity to be part of the competition is a rare civic honour.
3 Comments
“It should be noted that the opportunity to be part of the competition is a rare civic honour.”
Yet more nonsense from Cllr. Bowden. Any town council in the land is entitled to bid. There’s nothing special about WBC and certainly not a civic honour.
Some questions and an apology from me:
1. A small proportion of citizens responded to the consultation. I was one of them. It was a very poor quality consultation – didn’t actually ask the key question! Rather than using the low response rate as some kind of signal that the population doesn’t mind about the topic, maybe WBC should consider the possibility that the low response rate is a signal that their consultation process wasn’t very good?
2. ” An analysis of the responses showed, however, that people under 25 were more likely to agree or strongly agree with the benefits of city status, those aged over 55 were more likely to disagree or strongly disagree”. Hmm. Given that very few responses were received, I’m not sure that this kind of analysis has any merit. How many people under 25 responded? What percentage of the town’s under-25s does this represent?
3. Regardless, we’re going ahead. This will cost money and management capacity. Are there any other pressing matters which we need our council to focus on, or is everything running just fine? If we could only focus on, say, 3 priorities this year, would city status make the top 3? Top 10? Top 100?
4. Is it a positive thing for the town? Neutral? Negative? To date I haven’t seen any objective information which indicates what the benefits of city status might be.
5. I naively imagine that the role of an elected official is to represent their constituents. Looks like I have this back to front. Deepest apologies
This is a proud town with a proud heritage. A town is not a lower position than a city,
The cost/benefit seems to be very vague at best. Without any concrete evidence to the contrary, seems to be a vanity exercise for the council.
Let’s have some evidence of benefit and costings for this application if you want people to support it.