Your chance to speak out on super councils

By Noel McAdam – 01 January 2007

Series of public meetings planned

Public hearings into the Government's major shake-up of local government in Northern Ireland begin next week.

The two-day events are being organised in each of the seven envisaged new 'super-council' areas.

Assistant local government boundary commissioners are to chair the sessions, which are likely to hear severe criticism of the Government's blueprint.

Potentially the most contentious hearing is in Belfast, where the most far-reaching changes have been suggested.

Major parts of Lisburn, west Belfast and Castlereagh are to be incorporated in a massive new Belfast City Council area.

The radical upheaval will then have a huge knock-on effect, with the creation of one new council area, including the rest of the Lisburn area, Antrim, Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus.

The only other change affects part of Magilligan Strand which is to join a massive new North West council area.

The proposals could, however, be thrown back into the melting pot if a new Assembly gets up and running.

Only Sinn Fein supports the seven-council model and the other main parties, the DUP, SDLP and Ulster Unionists could push for plans to reduce the present 26 councils to 15.

That could render the work carried out at the public hearings over the next few weeks null and void.

Already the apparent decision to move Twinbrook and Poleglass from the new council, which includes Lisburn, into a greater Belfast authority have come under scrutiny.

The SDLP had warned that the seven-council plan amounted to a new gerrymander and partition and "lock us into a sectarian stand-off in local government for generations."

Each day of the evidence hearings will be divided into two sessions and the dates are:

NORTH WEST: January 11 and 12 at the City Hotel, Queen's Quay, Londonderry

WEST: at Omagh College, 2 Mountjoy Road, Omagh, on January 15 and 16.

BELFAST: at the City Hall on January 18 and 19.

EAST: at Lough Moss Leisure Centre on January 23 and 24.

NORTH EAST: on January 30 and 31 at the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster.

SOUTH: at Armagh City Hotel, Friary Road, on February 5 and 6.

INNER EAST: Templeton Hotel, Antrim Road, Templepatrick on Feburary 8 and 9.