In the United Kingdom, Charter Trustees are set up to maintain the continuity of a town charter or city charter after a district with the status of a borough or city has been abolished, until such time as a parish council is established. Functions are limited to ceremonial activities such as the election of a mayor. The Charter Trusees are made up of local councillors in the district representing wards within the boundaries of the town/city.

The original sets of Charter Trustees were set up in 1974, under section 246 of the Local Government Act 1972; in the 1990s several more such bodies were set up in another local government reorganisation.

Charter trustees were only set up if the new authority did not decide to 'inherit' city or borough status. For example, Charnwood inherited borough status from Loughborough, and there is no longer a Mayor of Loughborough, but instead a Mayor of Charnwood.

Originally, when the district in which a charter trusteed town was in gained the status of a borough, the charter trustees would be immediately dissovled. This provision has since been repealed.

Medway's decision not to appoint charter trustees for Rochester; or to apply for Rochester's city status to be transferred to Medway; led to Rochester losing its city status.

When boroughs such as Beverley were abolished in the 1990s, rather than give Charter Trustees authority over the entire area of the former borough, they were instead limited to that part of the borough which was unparished - the area identifiable as the town.

List

Possible future

If regional assemblies are introduced in England, and the Boundary Committee's recommendations for unitary government are implemented (regardless of which options are chosen), many districts with city or borough status would merge to form larger unitary authorities. Presumably new Charter Trustees orders would be made.

The affected cities are

• Carlisle
• Chester
• Durham
• Lancaster
• Preston

The affected boroughs are

• Allerdale
• Barrow-in-Furness
• Berwick-upon-Tweed
• Burnley
• Blyth Valley
• Castle Morpeth
• Chorley
• Congleton
• Copeland
• Crewe and Nantwich
• Ellesmere Port and Neston
• Fylde
• Hyndburn
• Macclesfield
• Pendle
• Ribble Valley
• Rossendale
• Scarborough
• Sedgefield
• South Ribble
• Vale Royal

External link

• An article about Charter Trustees from the City of Bath (http://thecityofbath.co.uk/charter_trustees.htm)