Local government may have started out simply but, following the Industrial Revolution, necessity required massive changes and, following World War II, national politics played an increasing part in creating complex layers of local administration.
There were further changes in The Later Middle Ages (1300–1500) and beyond (1500–1832)
The Great Reform Act 1832
The development of modern government in England began with the Great Reform Act of 1832. The impetus for this act was provided by corrupt practices in the House of Commons, and by the massive increase in population occurring during the Industrial Revolution.
The Reform Act (and its successors) attempted to address multiple issues by abolishing rotten boroughs (as both constituencies and administrative units), enfranchising the industrial towns as new parliamentary boroughs, increasing the proportion of the population eligible to vote, and ending corrupt practices in parliament. Although this did not directly affect local government, it provided impetus to reform outdated, obsolete and unfair practices elsewhere in government.
The Municipal Corporations Act 1835
After the reform of parliamentary constituencies the boroughs established by royal charter during the previous seven centuries were reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. The Act required members of town councils (municipal corporations) in England and Wales to be elected by ratepayers and councils to publish their financial accounts.
Before the passing of the Act, the municipal boroughs varied depending upon their charters. In some boroughs, corporations had become self-perpetuating oligarchies, with membership of the corporation being for life, and vacancies filled by co-option.
The Act reformed 178 boroughs immediately; there remained more than one hundred unreformed boroughs, which generally either fell into desuetude or were replaced later under the terms of the Act. The last of these were not reformed or abolished until 1886. The City of London remains unreformed to the present day. The Act allowed unincorporated towns to petition for incorporation. The industrial towns of the Midlands and North quickly took advantage of this, with Birmingham and Manchester becoming boroughs as soon as 1838. Altogether, 62 additional boroughs were incorporated under the act. With this Act, the boroughs (thereafter “municipal boroughs”) began to take a more noticeably modern and democratic form.
Public welfare reforms
During the industrial revolution there were massive population increases, massively increased urbanisation (especially in previously unimportant towns), and the creation of an urban poor, who had no means of subsistence. This created many new problems that the small-scale local government apparatus existing in England could not cope with. Between 1832 and 1888, several laws were passed to try and address these problems.
In 1837 laws were passed allowing rural parishes to group together as Poor Law Unions, in order to administer the Poor Law more effectively; these unions were able to collect taxes (“rates”) in order to carry out poor-relief.
In 1848, a Public Health Act was passed, establishing a Local Board of Health in towns, to regulate sewerage and the spread of diseases.
In 1873 and 1875, further Public Health Acts (Public Health Act 1873 & Public Health Act 1875) were passed, which established new quasi-governmental organisations to administer both the poor law, and public health and sanitation.
The Local Government Acts 1888 and 1894
By 1888 it was clear that the piecemeal system that had developed over the previous century in response to the vastly increased need for local administration could no longer cope. The Local Government Act was therefore the first systematic attempt to impose a standardised system of local government in England.
The Act established county councils as well as newly created areas for those councils, to be known as administrative counties. Each administrative county and county borough was governed by an elected county or borough council, providing services specifically for its own area.
A second Act in 1894 (the Local Government Act 1894) created a second tier of local government by dividing all administrative counties into either rural or urban districts, allowing more localised administration.
Attempts at reform (1945-1974)
Local governments across the United Kingdom lost power after the Labour Party won the 1945 general election and formed its first majority government under Clement Attlee. Under Labour’s post-war social and economic reforms functions traditionally operated by local governments such as gas, electricity, and hospitals were nationalized under regional boards or national government institutions such as the National Health Service. A government white paper published in 1945 stated that “it is expected that there will be a number of Bills for extending or creating county boroughs” and proposed the creation of a boundary commission to bring coordination to local government reform. The report was not acted upon.
The next attempt at reform was by the Local Government Act 1958, which established the Local Government Commission for England and the Local Government Commission for Wales to carry out reviews of existing local government structures and recommend reforms. Some borough changes were implemented.
The Local Government Commission was wound up in 1966, and replaced with a Royal Commission (known as the Redcliffe-Maud 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 (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 despite considerable opposition, but the Conservative Party won the June 1970 general election, and on a manifesto that committed them to a two-tier structure.
The Local Government Act 1972
The reforms arising from the Local Government Act of 1972 resulted in the most uniform and simplified system of local government used in England so far. They effectively wiped away everything that had gone before and built an administrative system from scratch. All previous administrative districts - statutory counties, administrative counties, county boroughs, municipal boroughs, counties corporate, civil parishes - were abolished, with the exceptions of Greater London and the Isles of Scilly.
The aim of the Act was to establish a uniform two-tier system across the country. New counties were created to cover the entire country. Many of these were based on the historic counties, but there were some major changes, especially in the North. The tiny county of Rutland was joined with Leicestershire; Cumberland, Westmorland and the Furness exclave of Lancashire were fused into the new county of Cumbria; Herefordshire and Worcestershire were joined to form Hereford & Worcester; the three ridings of Yorkshire were replaced by North, South and West Yorkshire, along with Humberside. The Act also created six new metropolitan counties, modelled on Greater London, to address the problems of administering large conurbations; these were Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne & Wear, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands. The new counties of Avon (the city of Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire), Cleveland (the Teesside area) and Humberside were designed with the idea of uniting areas based on river estuaries.
Each of the new counties was then endowed with a county council to provide certain county-wide services such as policing, social services and public transport. The Act substituted the new counties “for counties of any other description” for purposes of law. The new counties therefore replaced the statutory counties created in 1888 for judicial and ceremonial purposes (such as lieutenancy, custodes rotulorum, shrievalty, commissions of the peace and magistrates’ courts); and replaced administrative counties and county boroughs for administrative purposes.
The second tier of the local government varied between the metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties. The metropolitan counties were divided into metropolitan boroughs, whilst the non-metropolitan counties were divided into districts. The metropolitan boroughs had greater powers than the districts, sharing some of the county council responsibilities with the metropolitan county councils, and having control of others that districts did not (e.g. education was administered by the non-metropolitan county councils, but by the metropolitan borough councils). The metropolitan boroughs were supposed to have a minimum population of 250,000 and districts 40,000; in practice some exceptions were allowed for the sake of convenience.
Where municipal boroughs still existed, they were dissolved. However, the charter grants made to those boroughs (where transfer had not already occurred), were generally transferred to the district or metropolitan borough which contained area in question. Districts which succeeded to such powers were permitted to style themselves ‘borough councils’ as opposed to ‘district councils’ - however, the difference was purely ceremonial.
The new system of local government came into force on 1 April 1974, but in the event the uniformity proved to be short lived.
Further reform (1974-)
Local Government Act 1985
This uniform two-tier system lasted only 12 years. In 1986, the metropolitan county councils and Greater London were abolished under the Local Government Act 1985. The Conservative government’s stated reason for the abolition of the MCCs was based on efficiency and their overspending. However the fact that all of the county councils were controlled at the time by the opposition Labour Party led to accusations that their abolition was motivated by party politics.
Local Government Act 1992
By the 1990s, it was apparent that the ‘one-size fits all’ approach of the 1974 reforms did not work equally well in all cases. The consequent loss of education, social services and libraries to county control, was strongly regretted by the larger towns outside the new metropolitan counties, such as Bristol, Plymouth, Stoke, Leicester and Nottingham. The abolition of metropolitan county councils in 1986 had left the metropolitan boroughs operating as ‘unitary’ (i.e., only one tier) authorities, and other large cities (and former county boroughs) wished for a return to unitary governance.
The Local Government Act (1992) established a commission (Local Government Commission for England) to examine the issues, and make recommendations on where unitary authorities should be established. The commission recommended that many counties be moved to completely unitary systems; that some cities become unitary authorities, but that the remainder of their parent counties remain two-tier; and that in some counties the status quo should remain.
Whilst these reforms had removed unpopular new counties, they created a rather haphazard situation, which was for the most part like the old counties & county borough system; but in which areas taken to make the abolished new counties was not returned to the historic county.
Creation of additional unitary authorities after 2000
The years after 2000 saw further substantial changes, leading to a still more varied (some might say haphazard) system. Various Counties were made into unitary authorities: some by abolition of Districts (e.g. Cornwall, Northumberland), others by geographical division into two or more unitaries (e.g. Bedfordshire).
The Labour government (1997–2010) of the United Kingdom had planned to introduce eight regional assemblies around England, to devolve power to the regions. This would have sat alongside the devolved Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Assemblies. In the event, only a London Assembly (and directly elected Mayor) was established. Rejection in a referendum of a proposed North-East Assembly in 2004 effectively scrapped those plans.
