News | Padiham & Burnley West

Burnley's Ketamine Crisis

The ketamine crisis in Burnley is impacting both school children and adults, with users as young as twelve reported by The Burnley Express, involving child exploitation by grooming gangs, encouraging them to both use and sell the drug.

Upon starting in our roles, Burnley’s Reform UK County Councillors embarked on a fact finding mission, to inform our thinking on how best to tackle this crisis.

Myself, Councillor Mark Poulton and Councillor Liam Thomson attended a meeting of Ketamine Education Services, where recovering users shared their experiences, ideas and concerningly reported to us that ketamine is being mixed with fentanyl.

I then discussed the issue with Reform UK’s Lancashire County Council Deputy Leader, Councillor Simon Evans, who has extensive experience working against grooming gangs. He suggested setting up a task force to address the issue and offered to utilise his contacts within the Police force to help out.

Burnley’s Reform UK County Councillors then raised these concerns in a meeting with Oliver Ryan MP and fellow local County Councillor Azhar Ali OBE, who is the leader of the Lancashire County Council opposition party Progressive Lancashire.

Oliver shared that he has already asked the Government to reclassify ketamine as a ‘class A drug’ (it is presently ‘class B’), but to no avail. Azhar agreed to work cross-party, along with Burnley’s other County Councillors Maheen Kamran and Usman Arif, to tackle this issue.

Councillor Ali then raised the ketamine crisis at last week’s Lancashire County Council Cabinet Meeting, in his question to the Cabinet Member for Health, Councillor Daniel Matchett.

Lancashire County Council have just secured an extra £10.6 million of government funding to tackle drug addiction and reduce drug deaths.

Councillor Matchett detailed his experience working on frontline NHS services dealing with the fallout of the ketamine crisis and agreed to a meeting with all the Burnley County Councillors, which was supported by Lancashire County Council Leader Stephen Atkinson.

You can watch the exchange on YouTube by clicking here.

This exchange then made it to front-page BBC News, which you can read by clicking here.

Burnley’s County Councillors then met with the Burnley Express and Father Frost, to further discuss the matter, in the first of a couple of rounds of talks to explore the extensive investigative, raising awareness and support work they’ve been doing on this issue and to get their input and ideas.

We are now in the process of planning the task force, engaging with all stakeholders who can help tackle the issue, identify those affected by it and help them as soon as possible. This includes GP practices, hospitals, detoxification and rehabilitation services, the police, borough Councillors, charities, support groups, counselling services and more.

We are also looking at supporting the non-profit organisations working on tackling this crisis with funding, as well as routing extra investment via Lancashire County Council into support services.

This work is being done cross-party, constructively, without politicising the issue between Reform UK and Progressive Lancashire.

It’s notable that this has all happened within around a month of Reform UK and Progressive Lancashire becoming the ruling and opposition party at LCC, which is a breath of fresh air.

Sadly little has been done politically in the past before the crisis has got to this point, so it’s fallen to people like Father Frost, The Burnley Express journalists and Finley Worthington (Ketamine Education Services) to do most of the local fighting alone, without much support. Under new leadership and opposition, things are getting done at County Hall.