  Locally repairable codes for distributed storage systems have gained a lot of
interest recently, and various constructions can be found in the literature.
However, most of the constructions result in either large field sizes and hence
too high computational complexity for practical implementation, or in low rates
translating into waste of the available storage space. In this paper we address
this issue by developing theory towards code existence and design over a given
field. This is done via exploiting recently established connections between
linear locally repairable codes and matroids, and using matroid-theoretic
characterisations of linearity over small fields. In particular, nonexistence
can be shown by finding certain forbidden uniform minors within the lattice of
cyclic flats. It is shown that the lattice of cyclic flats of binary matroids
have additional structure that significantly restricts the possible locality
properties of $\mathbb{F}_{2}$-linear storage codes. Moreover, a collection of
criteria for detecting uniform minors from the lattice of cyclic flats of a
given matroid is given, which is interesting in its own right.
