Local Government Act 1972


The Local Government Act 1972 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales on 1 April 1974. It was one of the most significant acts of Parliament to be passed by the Heath Government of 1970–74.
The act took the total number of councils in England from 1,245 to 412, and in Wales to 45. Its pattern of two-tier metropolitan and non-metropolitan county and district councils remains in use today in large parts of England, although the metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986, and both county and district councils have been replaced with unitary authorities in many areas since the 1990s. In Wales, too, the Act established a similar pattern of counties and districts, but these have since been entirely replaced with a system of unitary authorities.
Elections were held to the new authorities in 1973, and they acted as "shadow authorities" until the handover date. Elections to county councils were held on 12 April, for metropolitan and Welsh districts on 10 May, and for non-metropolitan district councils on 7 June.

England

Background

Elected county councils had been established in England and Wales for the first time in 1888, covering areas known as administrative counties. Some large towns, known as county boroughs, were politically independent from the counties in which they were physically situated. The county areas were two-tier, with many municipal boroughs, urban districts and rural districts within them, each with its own council.
Apart from the creation of new county boroughs, the most significant change since 1899 had been the establishment in 1965 of Greater London and its 32 London boroughs, covering a much larger area than the previous county of London. A Local Government Commission for England was set up in 1958 to review local government arrangements throughout the country, and made some changes, such as merging two pairs of small administrative counties to form Huntingdon and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely, and creating several contiguous county boroughs in the Black Country. Most of the commission's recommendations, such as its proposals to abolish Rutland or to reorganise Tyneside, were ignored in favour of the status quo.
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, in the area that was to become the seven boroughs of the metropolitan county of West Midlands, local government was split between three administrative counties, and eight county boroughs. Many county boundaries reflected traditions of the Middle Ages or even earlier; industrialisation had created new and very large urban areas like the West Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester which spanned traditional county boundaries and were now often bigger than and far from their traditional county towns.
The Local Government Commission was wound up in 1966, and replaced with a Royal Commission. In 1969 it recommended a system of single-tier unitary authorities for the whole of England, apart from three metropolitan areas of Merseyside, SELNEC and West Midlands, which were to have both a metropolitan council and district councils.
This report was accepted by the Labour Party government of the time despite considerable opposition, but the Conservative Party won the June 1970 general election on a manifesto that committed it to a two-tier structure. The new government made Peter Walker and Graham Page the ministers, and quickly dropped the Redcliffe-Maud report. They invited comments from interested parties regarding the previous government's proposals.
The Association of Municipal Corporations, an advocacy group representing the boroughs, responded to Redcliffe-Maud by putting forward a scheme where England outside London would be divided into 13 provinces, with 132 main authorities below that. The AMC argued that the Redcliffe-Maud units would be too far removed from the people they served, and suggested units that in some places were much smaller in size. The Times gave the example of Kent, which under Redcliffe-Maud would have consisted of two unitary authorities, the smaller having a population of 499,000, while the AMC proposal would divide the same area into seven local authorities, ranging in population from 161,000 to 306,000.

White paper and bill

The incoming government's proposals for England were presented in a white paper published in February 1971. The white paper substantially trimmed the metropolitan areas, and proposed a two-tier structure for the rest of the country. Many of the new boundaries proposed by the Redcliffe-Maud report were retained in the white paper. The proposals were in large part based on ideas of the County Councils Association, the Urban District Councils Association and the Rural District Councils Association.
The white paper outlined principles, including an acceptance of the minimum population of 250,000 for education authorities in the Redcliffe-Maud report, and its findings that the division of functions between town and country had been harmful, but that some functions were better performed by smaller units. The white paper set out the proposed division of functions between districts and counties, and also suggested a minimum population of 40,000 for districts. The government aimed to introduce a bill in the 1971/72 session of Parliament for elections in 1973, so that the new authorities could start exercising full powers on 1 April 1974. The white paper made no commitments on regional or provincial government, since the Conservative government preferred to wait for the Crowther Commission to report.
The proposals were substantially changed with the introduction of the bill into Parliament in November 1971:
The bill as introduced also included two new major changes based on the concept of unifying estuaries, through the creation of the county of Humberside on the Humber Estuary, and the inclusion of Harwich and Colchester in Suffolk to unify the Stour Estuary. The latter was removed from the bill before it became law. Proposals from Plymouth for a Tamarside county were rejected. The Bill also provided names for the new counties for the first time.
The main amendments made to the areas during the bill's passage through Parliament were:
In the bill as published, the Dorset/Hampshire border was between Christchurch and Lymington. On 6 July 1972, a government amendment added Lymington to Dorset, which would have had the effect of having the entire Bournemouth conurbation in one county. The House of Lords reversed this amendment in September, with the government losing the division 81 to 65. In October, the government brought up this issue again, proposing an amendment to put the western part of Lymington borough in Dorset. The amendment was withdrawn.
The government lost divisions in the House of Lords at Report Stage on the exclusion of Wilmslow and Poynton from Greater Manchester and their retention in Cheshire, and also on whether Rothwell should form part of the Leeds or Wakefield districts. Instead, the Wakefield district gained the town of Ossett, which was originally placed in the Kirklees district, following an appeal by Ossett Labour Party.
The government barely won a division in the Lords on the inclusion of Weston-super-Mare in Avon, by 42 to 41.
Two more metropolitan districts were created than were originally in the bill:
  • Rochdale and Bury were originally planned to form a single district ; Rochdale took Middleton from Oldham in compensation.
  • Knowsley was not originally planned, and was formed from the western part of the planned St Helens district.
As passed, the act would have included Charlwood and Horley in West Sussex, along with Gatwick Airport. This was reversed by the Charlwood and Horley Act 1974, passed just before the act came into force. Charlwood was made part of the Mole Valley district and Horley part of Reigate and Banstead. Gatwick Airport was still transferred.
Although willing to compromise on exact boundaries, the government stood firm on the existence or abolition of county councils. The Isle of Wight was the only local campaign to succeed, and also the only county council in England to violate the 250,000 minimum for education authorities. The government bowed to local demand for the island to retain its status in October 1972, moving an amendment in the Lords to remove it from Hampshire, Lord Sanford noting that "nowhere else is faced with problems of communication with its neighbours which are in any way comparable".
Protests from Rutland and Herefordshire failed, although Rutland was able to secure its treatment as a single district despite not meeting the stated minimum population of 40,000 for districts. Several metropolitan boroughs fell under the 250,000 limit, including three of Tyne and Wear's five boroughs, and the four metropolitan boroughs that had resulted from the splitting of the proposed Bury/Rochdale and Knowsley/St Helens boroughs.