Everybody appreciates that places like West Lancashire need to grow. It’s still the greenest borough in the county - but the demands for housing and more light industry from neighbours like Merseyside and to a lesser extent Greater Manchester won't go away anytime soon...

And factor in the ambitions of the Northern Powerhouse and Atlantic Gateway project and you can see the size of the problem local councillors have to grapple with.

On Monday night, a public meeting in Bickerstaffe effectively asked ‘why us?’ as QLocal’s Roger Blaxall, the only journalist present, reports.

Two weeks ago, I attended a cabinet meeting at the Borough Council to discuss the consultation process on proposals in a controversial new 30 year local plan.

It ended in chaos.

I was the only reporter there and saw firsthand the shenanigans which were a result of letting too many people into the Council chamber and what can happen when folk - ill-informed or otherwise - get the wrong end of the stick.
Monday night’s meeting in the Four Lane Ends mission couldn’t have been more different; locals are concerned and angry over the new Labour proposals for a 30 year Borough plan but their emotions were expressed in a tempered fashion with no headline grabbing antics from any of the three local politicians, all of whom spoke.

More eloquent perhaps were the two members of the public who addressed the meeting which lasted just over an hour and ended with a firm resolve to fight plans to develop (or perhaps destroy what makes Bickerstaffe 'Bickerstaffe') with facts and figures - and not just emotion.

Competently chaired by PC vice chair Margaret Sumner (who didn’t too long to put first speaker Coun. David Westley (Conservative) in his place when he strayed in politicking) locals were shown PowerPoint presentations and given the latest Bickerstaffe Bulletin to illustrate the size of the challenge ahead.

Westley in effect said that one effective way of fighting the plans was by voting in a change of administration but as Mrs Sumner reminded him, this was an apolitical meeting and a suitably chastened Westley spent another ten minutes speaking of Tory opposition to the proposals.

In a recent press release, he said: ‘Bickerstaffe will get 18,000 new residents in 6,000 houses and a massive new business park all on 500 acres of Greenbelt and that as part of a new and unnecessary Local Plan, Labour are proposing to build three garden villages on 500 acres of Bickerstaffe’s greenbelt to build 6,000 new houses.

Whilst sounding idyllic, they will in fact be three new estates for what has been termed a Greater Skelmersdale.’

Two locals spoke next, an Elaine Curran followed by Robert Alker who got to the nub of the unique problems facing the parish.

“Let’s not forget they don’t make agricultural land anymore,” he said, his emotion on display

“They gave up making it on the third day of creation,” he added.

And if there’s one thing that Bickerstaffe has, its acres and acres of top quality agricultural land, with Lord Derby’s tenant farmers ensuring it’s some of the most productive in the county

The next speakers, OWL’s Adrian Owens and Labour’s Paul Cotterill emphasised the stance any opposition might take.

“Petitions cut little ice,” said Owens, with Cotterill saying that this is in its very early stages and there will be many discussions taking place.

Owens has been door knocking in the Lathom area and said he was concerned that different local communities would simply defend their own areas without looking at the bigger Borough wide picture.

Of course, the biggest player in all of this are not local politicians but Lord Derby; given the price that developers are willing to pay for land earmarked for development he is sitting on a potential goldmine...

The meeting ended with plans to set up a working party which would meet with local parish councillors to formulate its response. Locals were also told to flood the council with letters and emails objecting to the plans; there won’t be any public meetings, just consultations which are a lot different...

It looks like the future of Bickerstaffe is at stake – and that Bickerstaffe folk will be rising to the challenge of defending their much loved community...

Will Lord Derby join them? QLocal’s Roger Blaxall is hoping to interview him on the subject soon.