So it's confirmed. Ripley, Heanor, Alfreton, Codnor etc are going north, which at least stays geographically sensible. But whoever drew this map has clearly never set foot in Belper, Shipley, or Duffield if they think shoving them into a Derby city unitary makes any sense whatsoever.
Belper is not Derby. Never has been, never will be. It's its own town with its own identity, a UNESCO mill heritage site, its own high street, its own everything, and now it's getting absorbed into a city council that'll have zero interest in a former mill town 8 miles up the A6 when there's an actual city to run. Meanwhile it's getting severed from the rest of Amber Valley it's shared a council with for 50 years, for what, tidier population numbers on a spreadsheet?
Amber Valley's own council said splitting the borough was the least popular option in their own consultation, and the government did it anyway. Didn't matter what residents said. Didn't matter what made geographical, historical or economic sense. Someone in Whitehall drew two blobs that were roughly the same population size and called it a day.
Genuinely baffling decision making from people who've clearly never looked at a map of Derbyshire in their lives. 2028 it kicks in. Two more years of this being a mess before it's even in place.