Local Government Act 1972
The
Local Government Act 1972 was an
Act of Parliament in the
United Kingdom, that reformed
local government in
England and Wales, on
April 1,
1974.
Its pattern of two-tier
administrative county and
district councils remains in use today in
England, although many areas have now got single tier
unitary authorities. In
Wales, it established a similar pattern of administrative counties and
districts. These have since been entirely replaced with a
system of unitary authorities. In
Scotland, another Act established a similar system of two-tier
regions and districts in
1975 — this was also replaced by a
system of unitary council areas in 1996.
Background
\nElected County councils had been established in England and Wales for the first time in 1888, covering\nareas known as administrative counties. Some large towns, known as county boroughs were politically independent from the counties they were physically situated in. The county areas were two-tier, with many municipal borough, urban district and rural districts within them, each with their own council.
Apart from the creation of new county boroughs, the most significant change since 1899 (and the establishment of metropolitan boroughs in the County of London) had been the establishment in 1965 of Greater London and its thirty-two London boroughs, covering a much larger area than the previous county. Two pairs of small administrative counties were also merged at this time, to form Huntingdon and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely. However, the Local Government Commission was routinely having its recommendations ignored (such as its proposal to abolish Rutland as a county authority).
It was generally agreed that there were significant problems with the structure of local government. Despite mergers, there was still a proliferation of small district councils in rural areas, and in the major conurbations the borders had been set before the pattern of urban development had become clear. For example, the area that was to become the seven boroughs of county of West Midlands, local government was split between three counties (Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire), and eight county boroughs (Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Solihull, Walsall, Warley, West Bromwich, and Wolverhampton).
The Redcliffe-Maud commission was set up in 1966. In 1969 it recommended a system of single-tier unitary authorities for the whole of England, apart from three metropolitan areas of Merseyside, Selnec (Greater Manchester) and West Midlands (Birmingham and the Black Country), which were to have both a metropolitan council and district councils.
This report was accepted by the Labour Party government of the time, but the Conservative Party won the 1970 general election, and on a manifesto that committed them to 'two-tiers everywhere'.
The Act
\nThe Act abolished previous existing local government structures, and created a two-tier system of counties and districts everywhere. Some of the new counties were designated metropolitan counties, containing metropolitan boroughs instead. The allocation of functions differed between the metropolitan and the non-metropolitan areas (the shire counties) — for example, education and social services were the responsibility of the shire counties, but in metropolitan areas was given to the districts. The distribution of powers was slightly different in Wales than in England, with libraries being a county responsibility in England — but in Wales districts could opt to become library authorities themselves.
Although called two-tier, the system was really three-tier, as it retained civil parish councils, although in Wales they were renamed community councils.
The Act introduced 'agency', where one local authority (usually a district) could act as an agent for another authority. For example, since road maintenance was split depending upon the type of road, both types of council had to retain engineering departments. A county could delegate its road maintenance to the district council it it was confident that the district was competent Some powers were specifically excluded from agency, such as education.
The Act abolished various historic relics such as aldermen. Many existing boroughs that were too small to constitute a district, but too large to constitute a civil parish, were given Charter Trustees.
Most provisions of the Act came into force at midnight on April 1, 1974. Elections to the new councils had already been held, in 1973, and the new authorities were already up and running as 'shadow authorities', following the example set by the London Government Act 1963.
The new local government areas
The Act specified the composition and names of the English and Welsh counties, and the composition of the metropolitan and Welsh districts. It did not specify any names of districts, nor indeed the borders of the non-metropolitan districts — these were specified by Statutory Instrument after the passing of the Act.
In England there were 46 counties and 296 districts, in Wales there were 8 and 37. Six of the English counties were designated as metropolitan counties. The new English counties were based clearly on the old ones, albiet with several substantional changes. The 13 traditional counties of Wales, however, were abandoned entirely, and 8 new ones instituted.
England
The metropolitan counties were composed as follows
Three new counties were formed focused on old county borough as follows —
Two were formed from mergers —
Other changes to county boundaries were —
The only counties to survive entirely unchanged were
Cornwall,
Hertfordshire,
Isle of Wight,
Shropshire and
Wiltshire. Apart from these,
Devon,
Essex,
Kent,
Northamptonshire were only changed by the inclusion of county boroughs.
Many proposals made by the government were actually later withdrawn in favour of more traditional boundaries. The metropolitan counties were significantly trimmed from their original conception before they ended up in the Draft Bill, and were trimmed further before they ended up in the Statute Book. For example,
Merseyside lost
Skelmersdale,
Ellesmere Port and
Runcorn, while
Greater Manchester lost
Glossop and Wilmslow, and
Tyne and Wear lost
Easington.
Cleveland and
Avon also experienced trimming at the edges, with Cleveland losing
Whitby and Avon losing
Frome. Other rejected reforms included the inclusion of
Lowestoft with
Norfolk,
Colchester with
Suffolk,
Long Eaton with
Nottinghamshire,
The government stood firm on the existence or abolition of county councils. The
Isle of Wight (originaly scheduled to be merged back into
Hampshire as a district) was the only local campaign to succeed, despite protests from
Rutland and
Herefordshire.
Wales
In Wales the new counties generally bore no relation to the
traditional counties. Apart from the Glamorgans, all the names were
Welsh language names, with no English equivalant. The names were taken from ancient Welsh kingdoms.
In the south,
Gwent was a successor to
Monmouthshire, covering virtually the same territory, and also including
Newport county borough.
Glamorgan was split into
South Glamorgan (with
Cardiff),
West Glamorgan (with
Swansea) and
Mid Glamorgan (with
Merthyr Tydfil). In West and Mid Wales, two huge counties were established.
Dyfed was a merger of
Cardiganshire Pembrokeshire and
Carmarthenshire.
Powys was formed from the merger of
Brecknockshire,
Radnorshire and
Montgomeryshire, with those entities retained as
districts. In the north,
Gwynedd and
Clwyd were established, the former covering
Anglesey,
Caernarvonshire and most of
Merionethshire, the latter covering
Flintshire and most of
Denbighshire.
Map
Reaction and aftermath
\nDespite assurances that the Act was not attempting to amend historic loyalties, it nonetheless used the term 'county' instead of 'administrative county' and redefined the ceremonial counties used for purposes such as
Lieutenancy to these. Both these acts that have been criticised strongly by groups seeking to preserve awareness of
historic counties. The Act even redefined the area that the
Duchy of Lancaster had special rights in as being the shrunken
Lancashire along with all of
Greater Manchester and
Merseyside.
Other causes of outrage were the adoption of the new administrative counties by the makers of atlases, and the
Royal Mail in many cases adopting the changes. Whilst previous changes had been localised and so caused localised annoyance only, the 1974 reforms led to a wider movement.
Much of the reaction against the Act came not from people concerned with the preservation of traditional counties, but instead was motivated solely by opposition to change. The
Isle of Wight was historically part of
Hampshire, yet resisted efforts to integrate it back — the
county borough councils regretted the loss of their status. Especially stung was the
City and County of Bristol, which had had its own
Lord Lieutenant for centuries.
The system established was not to last. In
England, the county councils of the metropolitan counties (and the
Greater London Council) were abolished in
1986 by
Margaret Thatcher's government, effectively re-establishing county borough status for the metropolitan boroughs. A further local government reform in the
1990s led to the creation of many new
unitary authorities, and the abolition of
Avon,
Cleveland and
Humberside.
In
Wales the two-tier system was abolished entirely in
1996, and replaced with the current
counties and county boroughs of Wales. The 1974 counties have, with substantive border revisions, remained as
preserved counties for various purposes, notably as ceremonial counties.
