POLITICS: How echt is Rutland?
Everything you wanted to know about local government
A friend, knowing my great and professional interest in these matters, recently referred me to the always fascinating UK Local Government Information. I, however, know this site of old — I've used it regularly for its political composition section, in my ongoing crusade to bring Conservatism to local government (or destroy it in the trying).
Its attempt, however, to guide one through the mess in which the Parsnip Butterer left our county map, whilst as good any other I’ve read, is, fortunately, is not completely free from error! As an effort to bring those loyal localists out there, those telluric devotees of the immortal (Cumberland), some solace, I am going to perform for readers of ERO the great service of revealing the arcane secrets of local government in Britain! (with special reference to the situation pertaining to counties).
The problem, such as it is, boils down to this: there 39 historic Counties, of the sort you’ll see marked on any decent map. Sadly, in political administrative terms, these have been consigned (by, of course, a ‘Tory’ government, well, Edward Heath and Peter Walker at any rate) to the dustbin of history. What, constitutionally, we have now are, 34 ‘Administrative Counties’, and, as UK Local Government Information [UKLGI] has it, 47 ‘Ceremonial Counties’.
Now,
every Administrative County has a Ceremonial County of the same name, but the Ceremonial County is in many cases larger as it takes in areas served by Unitary Authorities. The other 13 Ceremonial Counties do not have an Administrative County of the same name. Insofar as there is an official definition of "Geographical" county I believe this is it. Everywhere in England falls within one (and only one) Ceremonial County. The term "Lieutenancy" is also sometimes used for these areas
explains poor UKLGI. To add the most muleish form of confusion to the matters, those Stalinists over at the Post Office no longer deign to ‘recognise’ traditional (or ‘postal’) counties as such. I’ll spare you the Celtic fringe, as now I must explain how even these delightful spods have got it all so terribly wrong.
Rutland, Herefordshire, the Isle of Wight and Bristol all function as administrative counties, not just ‘ceremonial’ ones as, for example, UKLGI thinks. To be fair to the author, he's probably been as confused by the Parsnip Butterer's chaotic legacy as everybody else, as the four lieutenancies in question are governed in each case by a single unitary authority, carrying both shire county and shire district responsibilities, unlike most county councils — say, like Cornwall, for instance — which have no shire district responsibilities. But, arguably demonstrating that the author has not quite succeeded in answering his original question, this still leaves us asking "when is a county not a county?", for the fact is that these are four areas with coterminous and exclusive borders for ceremonial and administrative purposes.
Indeed, Rutland's local authority is even officially styled Rutland County Council, which surely rests that particular case at least. The Isle of Wight's unitary authority is simply styled "The Isle of Wight Council", but, as it superceded the old Isle of Wight County Council as well as the island's two former district councils (and indeed was styled primarily to avoid the impression that the County Council had not simply swallowed up the districts and won the "county versus district" battle which dominated the unitary debate everywhere at this time — even though, clearly, it had), it is pedantic in the extreme, not to say a little bizarre, to claim that this means the island no longer forms an administrative county.
Similarly, Herefordshire's local authority is simply styled "Herefordshire Council", but as its creation was openly spun (right down to the restoration of the separate Lord Lieutenancy, for heaven's sake!) as an effort to restore the pre-'74 county, in one of the easiest and quickest decisions the Commissioners had to make — the Walkerite "county" of Hereford and Worcester never having been accepted either side of the Malvern Hills — no-one can be in any doubt that it is a county council to all but the most blinkered of civil servants. Indeed, its residents often refer to it as such and the only thing stopping it being thus styled formally is that it has more powers than official county councils, not less! "What is a county?", indeed!
And that brings us to Bristol, whose local authority is officially a City Council still. I must confess I do have some difficulty describing Bristol as a county in any sense. Why it was given its own Lord Lieutenant by the Parsnip Butterer, goodness knows. With the dissolution of the Walkerite county of Avon, the newly unitary city should properly have been transferred back to the lieutenancy of Gloucestershire, as was the new unitary authority of South Gloucestershire (whilst the new unitary authorities of North Somerset and Bath & N E Somerset were transferred back from Avon to the lieutenancy of Somerset). But it wasn't and it now has its own lieutenancy and council, with coterminous boundaries. Whichever way you butter your parsnips, that renders erroneous the author's categorisation of Bristol as a purely ceremonial county.
Confused again? Ah, sorry, but just thank the Lord that our own dear Mr Duncan Smith, with his three elected senators per county (God preserve us!), wasn't cartographer-in-chief at the time . . .
Dr Noel Lackland wishes that everyone right wing would stop talking such awfully empty waffle about ‘the merits of local government’ — he’s been there, and he knows better.
Noel Lackland, April 2, 2003 02:40 PM