That is the dilemma facing residents of High Peak, the peak-strewn (clue’s in the name) area of north-west Derbyshire that shoulder-barges its way up between South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester in a manner akin to a petty officer aggressively forcing his way between two would-be lovers who’ve been eyeing each other up across the canapés. (Look at a map, you’ll see what I mean.)
Snake Pass – or less romantically, the A57 – was built and paid for in the 1820s by the Duke of Norfolk and Duke of Devonshire; incidentally, the latter’s residence, Chatsworth House, inspired Mr Darcy’s Pemberley in Austen’s novel. But 200 years on, the task of maintaining it lies with Derbyshire County Council – and has exerted such demands upon their purse that they wish to withdraw from the exercise entirely.
For this reason the 90,000 High Peak residents are potentially set to move out of Derbyshire – in a bureaucratic sense, anyway – and into Greater Manchester. “We like the name Derbyshire, but ultimately all our connections are into the North not into the East Midlands,” High Peak’s MP Jon Pearce told The i Paper.
Not coincidentally, this High Peak discussion is happening at the same moment the local government reforms being led by Angela Rayner are in discussion. It’s an example of how all around the country, the connection between our counties, our regions and the people that belong to them are in flux.
These unitary authorities are designed to have populations of around 500,000, and at just 41,000 people Rutland has no chance of meeting that level. So something bigger will take its place – something that might mean residents can finally be certain exactly who is responsible for collecting their bins, but something that will not be, fundamentally, “Rutland”.
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Read MoreAnyone from somewhere obscure will tell you that’s it “not far from…” and name the nearest place that has a Football League club. And counties can get messed with at the stroke of a bureaucratic pen. Those 1974 reforms created Cleveland, Avon and Humberside – very much the Betamaxes of local bureaucracy reorganisation; names that live on only in residual police forces and Smiths lyrics.
That is the risk of some of these reforms: taking the councils out of the counties removes one more element of what they were, and you’re left with just a handful of cricket clubs as the only county-based elements of British life at all. And I think that is a shame.
Then again, all the county pride in the world won’t fill a single pothole.
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