A NEW political party that will represent two of the borough’s ‘neglected’ towns is set to be launched this week.

Farnworth and Kearsley First group has called a meeting to be held at Trinity Methodist Church, in Market Street on Thursday, where it hopes to officially form a party of the same name.

It comes about eight weeks after the group held a meeting in the same venue, attended by nearly 80 people, to gauge residents appetite for the move, dubbed ‘Fexit’ and ‘Kexit’.

Paul Heslop, the group’s interim secretary, said he had been in contact with several residents since the inaugural meeting in which there was a unanimous show of hands in favour of a new political group.

And he is confident of appointing candidates to the three key positions of leader, treasurer and returning officer, as required by the Electoral Commission.

He told The Bolton News that he believed a new party was needed to field candidates to fight for the interests of Farnworth and Kearsley on Bolton Council.

And he added that the party would aim to address the ‘inequity of spending in the borough, and wanted to see ‘significant capital investment in the towns.”

“It’s all Bolton-centric and needs to be sorted out. There’s been so much neglect over the years, we need something sorted. We’re not content just being a suburb of Bolton.

And Mr Heslop, said that the prospect of the wards of Farnworth, Kearsley and Harper Green breaking away to form its own authority was a genuine possibility.

He added: “It’s totally plausible and feasible to have our own authority.

“We would not be in the bottom quartile in terms of size, there are lots of examples of smaller authorities in the country.”

“We have said all along that there should be some sort of enquiry into what has gone wrong since the 1972 Local Government At, which has seen this town decimated. In a couple of years time Yasmin Qureshi could be in a situation where the councillors in her constituency are not from her party.”

Bolton Council disputed Mr Heslop’s claims that Farnworth and Kearsley had been starved of investment by the authority and that spending decisions were made ‘carefully and thoroughly’ with both need and fairness taken into account.

Following June’s meeting council leader Cliff Morris cited the redevelopment of Farnworth Town Hall , and improvements to Longcauseway and Broad Green Gardens as examples.