The leader of South Kesteven District Council has said merging with Rutland “makes sense” after having informal discussions.
Councillor Ashley Baxter (Independent) outlined that the two areas are similar in certain ways, and so when discussing plans for reorganisation, merging with Rutland County Council would make more sense than merging with other parts of Lincolnshire.
The leader of SKDC Ashley Baxter and leader of Rutland County Council Gale Waller
In one of the biggest shakeups to local government in over 50 years, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner outlined plans to introduce a directly elected mayor in every region and restructure two-tier local authority areas, such as Lincolnshire, into unitary authorities with approximately 500,000 residents each, in the devolution white paper released in December.
Leader of Rutland County Council Gale Waller (Liberal Democrat) previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that she had been having early informal discussions with Coun Baxter.
She said there had been a conversation before Christmas and another this week, but her understanding from the white paper was that reorganisation must follow health and policing boundaries. She advised the South Kesteven leader to check with central government about what might be possible.
The two councils share a border, and many residents live and work between the two counties but they have different police and fire services.
Coun Baxter outlined that Rutland will need to merge with another area due to it being the smallest county in the country and therefore unable to meet the 500,000 population threshold.
“They have to merge with someone. Historically, they have had links with Leicestershire, but a lot of people in Rutland, for employment, look to Peterborough and Lincolnshire. So it’s not necessarily a good fit for them to merge with Leicestershire.
“I think they are similar, other than them being a county council and us being a district, in terms of issues. We’re both largely rural, we’ve got small market towns, we’ve got an economy that involves people living in the middle of nowhere, we’ve got lots of things in common.
“It makes sense. It makes a lot more sense than South Kesteven being paired with East Lindsey because Skegness is miles away. They’ve got a different set of problems – valid problems – but problems I can’t do anything about. The same way I wouldn’t expect someone from Grimsby to explain to me how to run South Kesteven.
“You would need a strong argument to persuade me that local authorities would be better if we were lumped in with anywhere north of Boston.”
Coun Baxter added: “I think there is an opportunity at the moment to have conversations and to influence the process because the last thing we want is to have it done to us.
“We want a solution that works for residents of South Kesteven. I’m speaking to all the authorities that are contiguous to our district. I’ve already spoken to South Holland, Rutland, Newark and Sherwood, and it’s on my list to speak to Peterborough to talk about the options.”
Coun Richard Cleaver (Independent), cabinet member for property and public engagement, insisted there is a “groundswell of opinion” in Stamford that the area should join with Rutland.
He argued: “The actual boundary is so close to the edge of Stamford now that it’s dysfunctional. I really think there is a groundswell of opinion that it needs to be looked at very carefully. A lot of people want it to happen.”
However, he acknowledged that if the two areas did merge, it still wouldn’t be enough to meet the 500,000 population threshold, although Coun Cleaver believes this may soon be lowered to around 300,000.
“The more difficult part, in a sense, is who else do we have to go in with?” he asked.