As we approach Christmas, it’s a good time to reflect on what we have achieved and to think ahead to 2026.

This time last year, I was telling you about all the local people involved in building a new office for 3,000 Department of Work and Pensions staff. Now it not just been built, but is full of staff. We’re not stopping there, with a new building going up next to the railway station for 1,100 Ministry of Defence staff.

This time last year, we were talking about the new designs for the Multiversity campus on George Street. Now if you are passing the site you will see demolition work going on, with construction due to commence in the new year. There will be 3,000 students using the campus, not just bringing extra people into our town centre, with the benefit to local businesses, but Blackpool and the Fylde College have some very exciting plans about the kind of education and training they will deliver, alongside some of our best employers. This will help our young people prepare for the future and success.

And this time last year, our most prized asset, The Blackpool Tower, was being managed by a London-based company. Now, the Tower and Madame Tussauds are run by the people of Blackpool, for the people of Blackpool, with Kate Shane at the helm.

With these key attractions now fully in our control, we’re making sure the local community can more easily benefit from them. Everybody living in Blackpool can now go to our attractions at up to half price, and some of the community will be able to visit them completely free.

Progress

Our town’s motto is Progress and these examples show how much we can achieve when we work together to help make Blackpool a better place.

And so our thoughts turn to the new year ahead. Some of the main new areas of focus for us next year will be changing the face of housing in inner Blackpool with our £90m investment from Homes England, the first development at Silicon Sands and the leisure development at Blackpool Central.

The area around Central Drive hasn’t had the level of investment we would wish in the past, so it is wonderful to be able to make a real difference for and with the community. We know that we are talking about people’s homes and livelihoods, and while we hear from the community that they are fully behind the need for significant and sustained change in the area, the scale of renewal that is needed will be disruptive.

We are working with people in the area to help explore what this means for them, and very soon there will be planning application available for consultation for the area – giving people the opportunity to see how their voices have shaped what it is proposed will go back in. We are, in this initial phase, reducing the overall numbers of homes in an area but it is an area where the density of build is a real barrier to regeneration. It is not the people of inner Blackpool who need to change - it is the quality and safety of the homes and space around them. That will be the catalyst for building on what the best of the community brings to our town. To grow that feeling of neighbourliness, pride in your home and your surroundings, and a sense of security and safety that the people in the area tell us they want to preserve, and that sometimes sadly, they describe as being lost to the area over the past few decades.

We are right to be confident that housing led regeneration will work in this area – because we have seen it delivered for Blackpool. In Queens Park, Grange Park, Mereside and Foxhall Village, we have taken out a significant amount of poor quality flats and put back in homes for our families. Not just building houses, but communities.

The Indices of Multiple Deprivation can sometimes be used to tell negative stories about our town, but it can also show the impact we can have. The Queens Park estate was once home to five tower blocks, which included a police station; now it is into a welcoming community of council owned housing. In 2015 the area ranked as the 138th most deprived place in England, now it is 711th. Grange Park has made significant strides too. This is the model for what we are trying to achieve in Central Drive. Building a community for our people to belong to and to be proud of.

A place built on being welcoming

There’s something really special about Blackpool. A place built on welcoming visitors and one where many people come to make a life for themselves and their families. I love how we’re a mixture of all different identities – it makes our culture stronger. We will all have friends who have moved here over the decades, from every corner of this nation and from around the world.

You can see this in the kind of events we host in the Winter Gardens, punks, ballroom dancing, darts, rock music, orchestral, conferences of unions, nurses, religious organisations, business awards, musicals, theatre. Something for everyone and everyone is welcome.

We are a vibrant town built on resilience, diversity, and pride.

There is a lot of discussion about asylum seekers and migration in our town right now — much of it about the use of hotels. Sadly, a lot of what you might see on shared on social media can be misleading and doesn’t lead to healthy debate but can be divisive and make people from all walks of life more fearful than they need to be.

I want to tell people what is actually happening.

Asylum seekers are people who have fled their country and are awaiting a decision from the Home Office on their claim. They have a legal right to be in the UK while they are waiting for a decision from the Home Office.

For context, more than 141,500 people live in Blackpool. There are around 600 asylum seekers, mainly children and families, who are here temporarily while they wait for their claim to be processed. To put that another way, 99.6% of people in Blackpool are not people seeking asylum and are local residents.

I don’t believe the Metropole hotel is the best place for asylum seekers to be waiting for a decision, and we raise this with the Home Office regularly. Equally, despite some social media rumours, there are no plans for more hotels to be used in Blackpool.

For the people seeking asylum, they are not living in luxury. Far from it. The Metropole may have been luxurious once, but unfortunately it isn’t now. The families living there have no kitchen and very few private spaces. They only get £9.95 a week from the Home Office, barely enough money to buy anything, and they aren’t allowed to work. Some charities have offered recycled clothes, toys or sometimes phones, but that’s all they get.

From a council perspective, we changed our housing rules a decade ago, so only people with a local connection can apply for social housing in Blackpool. Asylum seekers can’t apply for social housing. If they are granted status to stay here then they could apply, but that is the same process as everybody else and there is no ‘queue jumping’.

It’s important to set out the facts. But it’s also important to remember that we’re talking about families and children. Some actions towards asylum seekers seek to divide our town, and they can make people feel unsafe in their hometown. That’s not acceptable.

We are welcoming town of hope, not hate. People are allowed to disagree with the government on their asylum processes, but please think twice about how actions could make other local people feel.

Your neighbours, your child’s school friends, your colleagues and care workers could all feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Speak to them about how this discussion makes them feel.

We shouldn’t be a town of us against them, but a town that works together as team Blackpool, with one shared aim: to make Blackpool a better place for everybody who lives here.

Merry Christmas

Particularly at Christmas, we should think of others and open our hearts to people who are less fortunate than ourselves.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. If you don’t, please remember that there is always support available.

From staying warm and fed to paying bills, or just having somebody to talk to, you can find out helplines and places to go at our Blackpool Together page.