If the government approves the BCP council’s decision to join the Heart of Wessex, the region will form an organisation and prepare for the election of a powerful metro mayor in May 2026.
Leaders of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire councils, Nick Ireland, Bill Revans and Richard Clewer said in a joint statement:
“We welcome BCP Council’s decision to confirm their interest in joining the proposed mayoral strategic authority for Wessex as part of the Government’s Devolution Priority Programme.”
BCP council hopes that joining the grouping will lead to more money for local services, such as infrastructure and transport.
For BCP, their plans to join the Heart of Wessex include things such as implementation planning as well as budget reviews and adjustments.
This could have several direct effects on residents such as improvements to local services such as waste collection, transport and public health.
Several councillors mentioned that residents should have a voice during this process.
Cllr Stephen Bartlett who said: “Whatever happens, whatever we decide I do hope we can bring our residents into this in some form of consultation.”
Councillors voted last night to join the Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire councils over the alternative Hampshire and Solent councils: Southampton, Portsmouth and The Isle of Wight.
After being granted an extension by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage having missed the original deadline for a decision on January 10th, The BCP council met at the Civic Centre last night.
The council leader Cllr Mille Earl hosted a Q&A earlier in the week where she said: “It’s not easy because we’re not a very obvious functional economic area and it’s not obvious which one we should join in terms of Hampshire and Solent or the Heart of Wessex.”
At the meeting last night, Cllr Millie Earl told the council that the “best route” would be to join the Heart of Wessex.
She said that “by improving links to the West we open up a whole new world of economic opportunity”
“Severing ourselves from the services we share with the West such as the police force, fire service and health services runs the risk of having to rebuild vital services, a task which is all the more difficult to the East while Hampshire and Solent face local government reorganisation.”
Cllr Andy Hadley stood as a second for the Heart of Wessex bid.
He said he was “concerned about being a small fish in a big pond” if BCP were to partner with Hampshire as they already have a continental ferry port and a deepwater port as well as Southampton airport and universities in both Southampton and Portsmouth.
He said: “With the Heart of Wessex, we uniquely hold many of those features.”
Cllr Patrick Canavan put forward an amendment for BCP to join Hampshire and Solent instead.
He said: “I believe that is by far the best option for us to move in.”
Cllr Anne Filer agreed and urged the room to look to the future, she said: “We’ve got the most fantastic area here and we need to be ambitious.”
The amendment did not pass and so the council moved on to vote on the substantive motion, to become a part of the Heart of Wessex, which passed by 43 votes to 12 and had four abstentions.
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