The leader of Rutland County Council hopes a special meeting tonight will help councillors reach agreement on the way forward for the county and local government reorganisation.
Gale Waller believes the options are limited and has been told Whitehall want to abolish small unitary authorities like Rutland even when they're well run. Leicestershire County Council has proposed a large unitary authority for the county and wants Rutland to join. The leader doesn't want Rutland to join something quite so big and proposes a split to make it smaller. Although the final decision is at council executive Rutland's MP Alicia Kearns has requested to speak at tonight's meeting. There's also an opportunity for all county councillors to have their say as well as members of the public. Leader, Councillor Waller, hopes tonight's meeting is constructive.
"I don't want to hear people saying, we've got to fight to stay as Rutland. Because quite frankly, if we do that, we will be told what we're doing. What I want to hear, certainly from the councillors, is we want to look at the evidence as to where we should go within the very constrained parameters that government have given us. Because you could split Leicestershire more than one way. The County Council wants a one Leicestershire model. I certainly don't want Rutland to be part of a one Leicestershire Unitary Authority, and I haven't found anyone in Rutland who does want that. And certainly the group leaders within Rutland County Council don't want it because I did set up a working group with them as soon as the white paper came out to sound them out, get their advice. And the one thing we're all adamant about is that we don't want to go into a one Leicestershire. But what the configuration is at this stage, I don't know. It depends what the evidence is saying."
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