As chief executive of Barnsley council up to 2012 I was party to the early, difficult discussions about the formation of the Sheffield city region; difficult because Derbyshire county council (and, similarly, Nottinghamshire county council) refused to engage in a sensible discussion about adapting institutional arrangements to reflect the reality of the economic geography of the sub-region. Economic data shows that Chesterfield is indeed part of the Sheffield city region economic area. The economic centre of gravity of Derbyshire itself lies to the south, in Derby’s relationship with Nottingham and Leicester.
Your editorial (Derbyshire’s dilemma pits cash against identity and democracy, 29 December) is wrong to say this argument is about council cuts and local councils “clutching at any cash straws they can”. Rather, it is about Chesterfield having the freedom to take its own decisions on its economic future, free from the dominion traditionally exercised by the county council. This need not threaten the historic and ceremonial ties with Chesterfield as part of Derbyshire, or even the pattern of most local service provision for Chesterfield residents. But it does require a change in the imperial mindset of the county council towards its district councils. The leadership of Chesterfield council should be congratulated for challenging the status quo, in the economic interests of their residents.
Phil Coppard
Rotherham
• As the daughter of a former town clerk of Chesterfield, who worked so hard on behalf of Chesterfield borough council to achieve intermediate area status for the town in 1974, it was so sad to read of the present council’s attempt to attach itself to the emerging city region of Sheffield. Intermediate area status gave Chesterfield economic stability and offered no threat to its historic identity. How depressing that the government’s draconian reduction of the grant to local authorities and its insensitivity to long-established local roots is reducing Chesterfield to such an undignified scramble for survival.
Clare Pitkin
Edinburgh
• It is not true that “there has never been any serious tradition of Chesterfield regarding itself as part of Greater Sheffield”; for 15 years from 1979 to 1994 Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire and Sheffield elected a member of the European Parliament. As the first MEP for the constituency 1979-84, I can say at first hand that the whole constituency benefited, not just through local government but also the ties with two world-class universities, the counties’ second largest teaching hospital and one of only four children’s hospitals in the country. Not only are they major employers but the spin-off from these institutions through their knowledge bank and economic clout benefits not only the cultural and sporting fabric of the Sheffield city region, but the whole region’s manufacturing and wealth-creating base, which includes Chesterfield.
Bassetlaw too has expressed a desire to become part of the Sheffield city region.
Richard Caborn
Sheffield
• Having commuted between Sheffield and Derby via Chesterfield along the A61 for 15 years, I found your leader struck several chords. In a mobile society, issues of local identity can no longer be seen in purely binary terms, and all sorts of practical and emotional belongings are projected onto historical and municipal boundaries. Similarly, many communities that find themselves between two staging posts have a certain Janus quality, and road and rail links afford Chesterfield both a northward and southward perspective. What is more, Chesterfield is served by both BBC Radio Derby and BBC Radio Sheffield, indicating that radio waves and local identity are less respectful of boundaries than we might suppose.
Keith Albans
Sheffield
• When I played football for my grammar school here in Derby we had an annual fixture with a school in Sheffield. The steel city seemed to be in a distant land and locals stood on the touchline baying “Derbyshire born, Derbyshire bred, strong in’t arm weak in’t head’. I was one of the 92% of respondents opposed to Chesterfield joining Sheffield when the county council organised its online poll. I would like to think that the late Tony Benn (MP for Chesterfield 1984-2001) would have voted likewise.
Dennis Ruston
Derby
• County identity is a key aspect of Englishness, and Derbyshire is not the only historic county under threat. Despite ambitions by some in the city councils of Southampton and Portsmouth to split Hampshire – mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle entry for AD755 – into two or more parts, a recent Ipsos Mori survey showed only 22% of Hampshire residents favoured such a division. Parish councils in East Hampshire have expressed deep concern at being included in a Greater Portsmouth or Solent City, as well they might, with some being closer to Reading or Guildford than they are to Portsmouth, let alone Southampton.
Modern patterns of economic life are complex and there are no clear straight lines that put us into clear and distinct areas. Hampshire probably splits into at least six economic areas that overlap each other. What we do know is that to split administrative areas and disaggregate services is expensive and loses economies of scale. I am so grateful the government has recognised these facts and resisted moves to split this and other counties.
Cllr Roy Perry
Leader, Hampshire county council
• Ministers may well mess with medieval county boundaries “at their peril’ but older people in Rhyl, Prestatyn and St Asaph have resided in three counties since the 1970s without ever having moved house. First in Flintshire (then a county in three separate parts), before local government reorganisation in 1974 placed them in Clwyd. With the demise of Clwyd they now find themselves in Denbighshire, while Flintshire has been reinstated as a smaller county, and without its exclaves, the larger of which had been situated between Denbighshire and Shropshire. Proposals for Chesterfield to be an exclave of a Greater Sheffield seem straightforward in comparison.
Anthony Blane
Nottingham
• The dilemma facing Derbyshire is, as you suggest, played out in many other parts of England, not least in the north. New local government structures have been imposed on a reluctant population and the latest move to unaccountable city regions is a further step away from democratic government. The one crumb being offered in some city regions is elected city mayors. Yet, unlike Greater London, they will not be scrutinised by an elected assembly.
In Greater Manchester many people in towns such as Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale and Wigan (all of which once had strong local government, now hollowed-out shells) regard themselves as Lancastrians – not “Greater Mancunians” – and above that, as northerners. A new constitutional settlement for the north should recognise these identities, instead of trampling on them.
Professor Paul Salveson
Bretherton, Lancashire
• Never mind the angst over Chesterfield and the Sheffield city region. Here in Cheshire the equivalent happened two years ago, with the inclusion of the borough of Halton in the Liverpool city region. Although contiguous with other boroughs in the city region, Halton is constitutionally one of the four boroughs that make up the county of Cheshire. The sizeable part of the borough to the south of the Mersey is actually part of the historic county palatine of Cheshire.
The consequences for the voters of Halton are mind-boggling. For services such as economic development, transport and housing they must look to Liverpool city region, for whose “metro mayor” they have a vote. For the main local government services, education and personal social services, they continue to look to Halton borough, for whose council they have a vote and one of whose members is mayor of Halton itself. The police service (like the fire service) is a county function, so they also have a vote for the Cheshire police and crime commissioner. And for all legal and ceremonial purposes Halton is fully part of Cheshire county under the lord lieutenant.
It is true that our country can no longer define itself by the coherence or equity of its policies, but even so this is a truly tangled web. Ironically the sleepy rural village of Daresbury, at the eastern edge of Halton and the birthplace of Rev Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), can now if it wishes see itself as a dynamic part of the thrusting new Liverpool city region!
Robin Wendt
Chester
• The 1969 Redcliffe Maud report recommended abolition of all local authorities (except London) and the creation of city regions based on large towns which were already employment, commercial and recreational centres and, crucially, to my mind, centres of local travel patterns. The election of the Conservatives in 1970 saw the end of this sensible proposal, since counties, widely run by Tories, saw in the plan the loss of their local political power. As a result we ended up with a dog’s breakfast of a local government structure made worse by the abolition of metropolitan counties in 1986 and now the creation of disparate unitary authorities in some parts of the country.
Maureen Panton
Malvern, Worcestershire
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