In April 1946 the commission wrote to county and county borough councils, asking for information on any boundary proposals they were considering. By August they had received replies from 80 of 83 county boroughs and 42 of 61 county councils, stating they were seeking boundary reviews. Acting on the information they had received, the commission prioritised the review of areas into two categories, "A" and "B". Reviews of areas in category A were to proceed as soon as possible, while the review of category B areas would be held back until July, 1947 (except where they would affect the boundaries of areas in category A). The first reviews concerned the claims of
Dagenham,
Ilford,
Leyton,
Luton,
Rochester-
Chatham-
Gillingham, and
Walthamstow for county borough status. Among the category A reviews were the boundaries of
Bedfordshire, the areas of
Surrey within the Greater London area, and a request by the
municipal boroughs of
Beckenham and
Bromley to form a joint county borough.
First report On 22 April 1947, the commission presented its first report to Parliament, covering its work in 1946. The following investigations had been begun: • Plymouth • Bootle and Liverpool • Luton • Eleven Welsh counties (excluding Glamorgan) • South-west Essex (East Ham, West Ham, Barking, Chingford, Dagenham, Ilford, Leyton, Romford, Walthamstow, Wanstead and Woodford, Chigwell and Hornchurch) • Southampton • Grimsby • Twelve county boroughs in south and east Lancashire (Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, St Helens, Salford, Warrington and Wigan) • Part of East Anglia (Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Isle of Ely, Lincolnshire (Holland, Kesteven and Lindsey), Soke of Peterborough, Rutland, Norfolk and the county boroughs of Great Yarmouth, Lincoln and Norwich) • Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester • Dudley, Smethwick, Walsall, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton • Bath and Bristol • Cheltenham and Gloucester • Portsmouth • Sunderland In addition, the report recommended the ending of the distinction between (non-county) boroughs, rural districts, and urban districts, with all to become known as "county districts". The privileges granted to boroughs under municipal charters were to be preserved, however. The commission also sought an amendment of its powers, to extend its power to divide districts to municipal boroughs as well. It was announced that decisions in the "urgent" category A areas would be given the following month.
First recommendations Decisions on the category A areas were announced 1 May 1947: •
Liverpool: The county borough council had sought to annex the county borough of
Bootle and the borough of
Crosby, the urban districts of
Huyton-with-Roby and
Litherland and much of
West Lancashire and
Whiston rural districts. The commission proposed a much smaller extension to include parts of the two rural districts. • Bootle: The county borough was to be enlarged by gaining the borough of Crosby, the urban districts of Litherland and parts of West Lancashire rural district. The commission felt that without the extensions Bootle would no longer be a viable local government unit. •
Plymouth: the county borough had sought to annex a large area from the two adjoining counties. From Cornwall would have come the borough of
Saltash,
Torpoint urban district and part of
St Germans rural district, and from Devon the entire
Plympton St Mary rural district and the southern part of
Tavistock rural district. The commission limited its proposed extension to two parishes from the Plympton rural district. •
Hull: The county borough was to be enlarged by the absorption of
Haltemprice urban district and parts of
Beverley and
Holderness rural districts. •
Southampton: Interim recommendations were made to allow the county borough to acquire territory in order to provide housing following wartime damage. The corporation had sought to gain part of the borough of
Eastleigh, but the extension was limited to small parts of the rural districts of
Romsey and Stockbridge and
Winchester. •
Grimsby: The commission deferred a decision on the county borough's boundary. Grimsby corporation sought to annex the adjacent borough of
Cleethorpes and much of
Grimsby rural district, which would probably have ceased to exist as a result. •
Luton: The borough had sought county borough status and an extension of its boundaries. The commission deferred a decision on the status of the borough, and proposed a small enlargement of its area. Suggestions that the borough should merge with that of
Dunstable were rejected. •
Lancashire and North
Cheshire: No final decision on the future of fourteen county boroughs in the area were made. If all the requests for extensions had been granted, much of south Lancashire would have been made up entirely of county boroughs, and the commission sought to review the areas around
Manchester and
Salford before making proposals for the fourteen boroughs. • Eastern Counties: The commission considered that six administrative counties (
Huntingdonshire,
Isle of Ely,
Holland,
Kesteven,
Rutland, and
Soke of Peterborough) were too small to be effective units, and amalgamations would be necessary. Two weeks later the commission issued a statement on further proposed changes: • St Helens: The county borough had asked for an extension to absorb two neighbouring urban districts and six parishes. The commission issued an interim decision, restricting the proposed extension to most of the parish of Windle in the Whiston rural district, as the borough needed land for housing purposes. Further extensions were deferred until the consideration of the wider area. • Oldham: The commission proposed extending Oldham county borough to absorb Lees urban district and part of Limehurst rural district, the rest of which was to be split between the borough of Ashton-under-Lyne and Failsworth urban district. As in St Helens, this was an interim decision to allow the borough's housing programme to progress. • South-west Essex: The commission had not made a final decision on the area, but hoped to make a decision on "broad principles" within a year. • Staffordshire: The commission also hoped to make a decision on seven county boroughs within a year, noting that the
Ministry of Town and Country Planning was to carry out a comprehensive planning survey of the geographical county, which might effect local government reforms.
Second report The commission's second report was issued in April 1948. It contained a notably strong section outlining the deficiencies with the existing system of local government, and therefore the report made comprehensive proposals for local government areas throughout England, and suggestions for Wales. It was later to be argued that in producing this report, the commission had significantly exceeded its brief. The commission recommended the creation of: • 20 one-tier counties (with a target population 200,000 to 1 million) • 47 two-tier counties (target population 200,000 to 500,000) • 63 "most-purpose" new county boroughs, which were to be part of the two-tier counties for certain purposes (target population less than 200,000)
One-tier counties The proposed one-tier counties were based on twenty large county boroughs, which were to continue to manage all local government services in the area. Two of these counties were to be formed from the amalgamation of a number of existing councils. • Birmingham • Bradford • Bristol • Central Sussex (Brighton county borough, Hove municipal borough, and Portslade, Shoreham and Southwick urban districts) • Coventry • Croydon • Derby • East Ham • Kingston-upon-Hull • Leeds • Leicester • Newcastle upon Tyne • North Staffordshire (Stoke-on-Trent county borough, Newcastle-under-Lyme municipal borough, and Kidsgrove urban district) • Nottingham • Plymouth • Portsmouth • Sheffield • Southampton • Sunderland • West Ham
Two-tier counties The two-tier counties were based on the existing administrative counties. The commission felt that in order to provide effective local government a county must have a population of more than 200,000 and less than a million. From this it followed that a number of small counties would need to be merged, and large ones divided. The small counties requiring union were: Cambridgeshire, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Isle of Ely, Lincolnshire (Parts of Holland), Lincolnshire (Parts of Kesteven), Rutland, East Suffolk, West Suffolk, Soke of Peterborough, Westmorland and Worcestershire. Although the Isle of Wight was below the population limit it was to be preserved because it was
an island and cannot conveniently be united with the mainland." This meant that the proposals in their previous report would not be carried out, and the commission's annual report for 1948 which followed in April 1949 was therefore reduced to recommending orders under existing legislation. The report also noted that the four proposals for combinations of Welsh counties had been unanimously rejected by the county councils. On 27 June 1949 a decision to abolish the commission was announced in Parliament. The minister praised the work done by the commission, but noted that it did not have the power under the 1945 act to alter the structure or vary the functions of local government. The government recognised that it was difficult for the commission to continue with its work without considering these factors. It was therefore repealing the act creating the body, restoring the situation for local boundary reviews to that pertaining in 1945. The government was to carry out a review of the structures and functions of local administration, including London, although the Minister was unable to give a date for its commencement. Local government academic Bruce Wood, reviewing the history of the commission nearly 30 years later, remarked that its refusal to be constrained in its 1947 report meant the commission had "committed suicide". The statement effectively delayed reform until the next parliament, a fact not lost on the commission's former chairman who wrote to
The Times bemoaning the fact that "the Government's review of local government structure, which was stated in 1949 to be already in being, appears to have led nowhere. This lack of decision is bad enough for local government, but surely the reconstitution of district authorities, without previous consideration of any of the functions or boundaries of the existing counties and county boroughs, or even any power to consider them simultaneously, would be a farce." The Labour Party lost power to the
Conservatives in the general election of 25 October 1951, and no further review of local government was put forward until the publication of the white papers leading to the
Local Government Act 1958 (
6 & 7 Eliz. 2. c. 55). == Notes ==