Oral Answers to Questions

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Sally Jameson)]

The Government are determined to ensure that we have strategic authorities everywhere by the end of 2028, and I and other Ministers in the Department will work with my hon. Friend and council leaders from across the region to ensure that they also get a strategic authority in that time.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

West Surrey unitary authority wrote to the Secretary of State asking her to change the name of that authority to West Surrey and South Middlesex—a move that I thoroughly support. The local government Minister wrote back to them and said, “It’s nothing to do with me; just change your name yourself.” Will the Minister confirm what his spokesman said to the BBC, which was that,

“West Surrey Council has the power to change its own name to include Middlesex if it chooses to do so, and we’ve set this out in a letter to them”?

[Jim McMahon]

As explained in the letter, it is not for the Secretary of State to determine the names of local authorities; local authorities have the legal right and ability to change them themselves. My advice is to crack on with it.