The Fight for Rutland

Alicia Kearns, MP for Stamford and Rutland, has launched a Save Rutland campaign and petition. The move is in response to the Government’s English Devolution White Paper, one consequence of which is likely to be the abolition of the current Rutland Council and the inclusion of Rutland within a larger unitary council with some parts of Leicestershire.

Whilst the historic county of Rutland will continue whatever happens to local government and lieutenancy arrangements, the local feeling is clearly that Rutland should keep its lord-lieutenant. Alicia Kearns has written to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner requesting that she act to protect Rutland’s ceremonial status regardless of the outcome of Local Government Reform.

The Association of British Counties’ own recent letter to Angela Rayner suggested that the ongoing local government reorganisation provides the Government with the opportunity to tackle the main threat to the identities of the historic counties: their confusion with local government. In establishing unitary councils, the Government should:

• Replace the terms ‘county’ and ‘county council’ within local government legislation, terminology and parlance with ‘council area’ and ‘council’, as used in Scotland.

• Ensure that none of the new unitary councils or Strategic Authorities bears an unqualified historic county name unless the council/authority is close in area to that historic county.

We also suggested that these moves could be backed up by re-appointing the lieutenancies of England to the historic counties, as are many lieutenancies in Scotland (e.g. Banffshire, Caithness, Dunbartonshire, Kincardineshire, Sutherland).

Alicia Kearns campaign to seek just this with regards to Rutland gives the Government something of a dilemma. With one small exception, the lieutenancies in England are based entirely on local government areas. To agree to a Rutland lieutenancy separate from the new local government set-up would drive a coach and horse through this approach. But to deny it would inevitably be portrayed as the Government doing away with Rutland. Would the Government do that?

Our argument is simply this. If Rutland can have a lord-lieutenant, then why can’t Middlesex? Why can’t Huntingdonshire? What can’t all our historic counties?