Rutland County Council favours a Leicestershire merger

Wednesday, 19 November 2025 10:02

Councillors in Rutland will only discuss proposals that include a merger with Leicestershire as part of local government reorganisation,

after an option that included South and North Kesteven, South Holland and Rutland was dropped by councillors across the border. Rutland say they were only told last Wednesday that they were being taken out of the South Lincolnshire option. Councillors there say they needed more backing from Rutland to include them. A meeting this Thursday evening at Catmose House in Oakham will see councillors debate the three proposals joining the whole of Leicestershire everywhere apart from the city and North West Leicestershire, including Melton and Charnwood. Rutland and Stamford MP Alicia Kearns says it's hugely disappointing a Rutland and South Lincolnshire option has been taken off the table.

‘As we look ahead to Rutland County Council’s meeting on a government reform, I know that lots of residents were hopeful that obviously a merger with South Kesteven District Council will be one of the options on the table. Unfortunately, we've now had the news that South Kesteven District Council felt they had no choice but to exclude Rutland from their proposal going forward because they haven't had the level of commitment that they needed to be able to do it. And the government's been very clear that if you want to put forward a proposal all parties must be supportive of that wherever possible and that's really important if you want to have a successful bid. So this is really disappointing, for instance. So I'm now looking at what does that mean for us and obviously speaking to Council to try to understand where we go from here’.