Officers warn of lengthy legal process to regain city status after local government reorganisation

Stoke-on-Trent was first granted city status by Letters Patent issued by King George V in 1925.

However, its city status could be threatened by reorganisation, which will see the county's two-tier local authorities replaced by two new unitary councils.

The city council, which will be subsumed by a unitary covering the north of Staffordshire under the plans, has since called on the Government to preserve its city status by including it in its Structural Changes Order (SCO), which will formally abolish the existing county and district councils.

An officer's report produced for the council's Strategy and Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee warned of a lengthy legal process to re-obtain city status if it is not preserved through the SCO.

It said: "Legal precedents elsewhere in England indicate that a failure to enshrine both ceremonial institutions within the SCO legislation could lead to their temporary loss and involve a complex and unnecessary bureaucratic undertaking to get them reinstated following implementation of the new governance arrangements."

According to the report, the council supports the establishment of Charter Trustees (a corporate body created specifically to maintain and promote ceremonial traditions on behalf of a local area) for Stoke-on-Trent as the best way of preserving city status and the ceremonial offices of the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor during the local government reorganisation process.

Charter Trustees may be established by an order under section 7 of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.

A separate report on the same issue, considered by full council on Thursday (23 July), noted that establishing Charter Trustees would transfer the historic rights and privileges contained in the 1974 Letters Patent to the trustees, who would hold those rights and privileges in place of Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

It said: "In short, there would still be a Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent (preserved and elected by the Charter Trustees), but this person would not be the chairman of the new unitary authority."

This report also warned the Government's most likely approach to preserving city status would be through a supplementary order to the initial Structural Changes Order.

Stoke-on-Trent has raised concerns about this approach and requested that city status instead be addressed in the initial Structural Changes Order.

The report said: "Not to put legal mechanisms in place prior to the abolition of Stoke-on-Trent City Council would likely mean the loss of Stoke-on-Trent's city status.

"It is not unknown for this to occur, with other settlements having lost their city status during local government reorganisation where this has not been done. Re-gaining city status once lost is within the gift of the monarch, being granted through Letters Patent, and is very infrequently granted."

The report cited Rochester, which lost its city status in 1998 and has yet to regain it.

It added: "Given the risk, the City Council has written to MHCLG, making clear the criticality of this matter being dealt with through an appropriate order, preferably the SCO itself but, if that is not possible, a supplementary order."

Adam Carey