Early steps along the path to establish a town council for Lynn could be taken by the end of this year.
That is according to West Norfolk Council leader Terry Parish, who has raised the possibility of setting up a separate ruling body for the town – allowing the borough council to operate without ‘Lynn’ in its official title.
Any decision on this would require a referendum to be held, and possibly a prior referendum to that to decide whether an official vote should go ahead in the first place.
Cllr Parish has mentioned this potential shake-up in both a letter to the Lynn News and a visit to Downham Town Council’s full meeting in recent weeks, telling the latter: “I want West Norfolk to be West Norfolk.”
When the new Independent-led administration took control of the council earlier this year, he put the idea to the King’s Lynn Area Consultative Committee (KLACC) – and admits “a lot of work” to determine pros and cons has to be carried out.
However, the committee responded with a message of ‘pursue the idea’ – and Cllr Parish told the Lynn News: “That’s what we intend to do.”
“At the end of this year, I’ll ask officers and others to go into the ins and outs of it,” he said.
“If there is a pushed thinking of people saying ‘yes, let’s go ahead with this’, then we have to go into the formal referendum.
“If there is public outcry about the idea, then perhaps it wouldn’t be a good idea to go for it.”
Analysis on the changes a town council for Lynn would make would be put residents, potentially including those who live throughout the borough because the plans would impact all of them.
“The potential advantage to Lynn is there would be more people having more say on what is going on in the town, rather than having a top-down approach from the extended borough council,” Cllr Parish added.
“A town council could identify what they want and then put it to the borough council, like Hunstanton does and Downham does.
“Local people have more say through their town council on what they want in their town.”
