LEADERS have voted to protect Carlisle’s heritage, ensuring it remains a city with a mayor after it becomes part of Cumberland next year.

Carlisle City Council met at the Civic Centre on Tuesday, voting on a number of important items.

Amongst them, what steps to take in order to protect Carlisle’s heritage beyond 2023.

Carlisle, Allerdale and Copeland will form the new area of Cumberland on April 1, 2023 at which point the existing city, county and borough councils will be abolished.

But the reorganisation raises questions for Carlisle’s city status as the abolition of the city council would mean a mayor is not in place to hold the charter.

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A place has city status when given the charter, entrusted to the mayor or town clerk.

At their meeting on Tuesday, the outgoing council agreed to transfer armorial bearings like the city crest and historic property like the mayor’s chain of office to new Charter Trustees.

The trustees will be appointed to hold the charter in Government legislation and will likely be Carlisle based members of the new Cumberland Council.

During the discussion, Councillor Helen Davison said: “I was just left with a lot of questions as I looked at this. Is this city councillors, is this Cumberland councillors?

“Obviously we’ve got all the ceremonial things and we need to be looking after them. My question would be, do we need to be setting up Charter Trustees or could this function be transferred to the new Cumberland authority without putting another layer of bureaucracy in place?

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Mark Lambert, Corporate Director of Governance and Regulatory Services said: “What it relates to is the continuity of the city status and the mayoralty.

"The Consequential Matters Order comes forward from Government which we have in draft form and we’ve asked for some of the wording to be tightened but in essence, the relevant councillors will be Cumberland councillors we think, the Cumberland councillors that are elected to represent areas which are now, the unparished urban areas.

“They will become the Charter Trustees, they effectively hold all the civic and ceremonial possessions and they elect a mayor from their number.”

They will continue to hold the charter until alternative arrangements which will likely be the creation of a parish council, styled as a town/city council for the urban area of Carlisle.

Trustees will also become responsible for the tradition of admission to the Ancient Freeman Rolls every year on Ascension Day.

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