 | |
| Long title | An Act to transfer parts of the new parishes of Charlwood and Horley to the new county of Surrey, and for connected purposes. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 1974 c. 11 |
| Introduced by | Graham Page |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 8 February 1974 |
| Commencement | 1 April 1974 |
| Other legislation | |
| Repealed by | Statute Law (Repeals) Act 2004 (section 2(3)) |
Status: Partially repealed | |
The Charlwood and Horley Act 1974 (1974 c. 11) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that amended the Local Government Act 1972 to move the villages of Charlwood and Horley from West Sussex to Surrey.
An act of parliament, also called primary legislation, are statutes passed by a parliament (legislature). Act of the Oireachtas is an equivalent term used in the Republic of Ireland where the legislature is commonly known by its Irish name, Oireachtas. It is also comparable to an Act of Congress in the United States.
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known internationally as the UK Parliament, British Parliament, or Westminster Parliament, and domestically simply as Parliament, is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. The two houses meet in the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London.
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.
The 1972 Act had provided for the transfer of Gatwick Airport and the parishes of Charlwood and Horley from Surrey to West Sussex. The transfer was opposed by Surrey County Council, Dorking and Horley Rural District Council and Charlwood and Horley Parish Councils. [1] Arguments against the transfer included the loss of expertise built up by the Surrey local authorities on airport management and planning, loss of territories to school catchment areas and remote administration from Chichester. It was also suggested that the areas were likely to be administered as part of Crawley New Town, with which they had no linkage. On 5 December 1971 a demonstration by 1,500 residents disrupted traffic on the main London to Brighton road at the proposed boundary. [2]
Gatwick Airport, also known as London Gatwick, is a major international airport near Crawley in West Sussex, southeast England, 29.5 miles (47.5 km) south of Central London. It is the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom, after Heathrow Airport. Gatwick is the eighth-busiest airport in Europe. Until 2017, it was the busiest single-use runway airport in the world, covering a total area of 674 hectares.
Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, in South-East England. It is the only city in West Sussex and is its county town. It has a long history as a settlement from Roman times and was important in Anglo-Saxon times. It is the seat of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, with a 12th-century cathedral.
Crawley is a large town and borough in West Sussex, England. It is 28 miles (45 km) south of Charing Cross (London), 18 miles (29 km) north of Brighton and Hove, and 32 miles (51 km) north-east of the county town of Chichester. Crawley covers an area of 17.36 square miles (44.96 km2) and had a population of 106,597 at the time of the 2011 Census.
On 27 January 1972, Michael Heseltine, Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, stated that the transfer of the airport would go ahead, but that the question of whether the two villages would remain in Surrey was not finally decided. [3] Surrey County Council's proposed amendments to keep Gatwick within the county were rejected by the House of Commons in July 1972, but the council decided to take its case to the House of Lords. [4]
Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine,, is a British Conservative politician and businessman. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket. Heseltine served as a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 2001, and was a prominent figure in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including serving as Deputy Prime Minister under the latter.
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is granted respectively ruled by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster. Officially, the full name of the house is the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
On 17 October 1973, it was announced that the Government would be holding negotiations about the Surrey/West Sussex boundary. [5] The Charlwood and Horley Bill was introduced to Parliament on 31 October 1973. It passed all stages on the last day of the parliamentary session and received royal assent on 8 February 1974. [6] [7]
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy royal assent is considered to be little more than a formality; even in those nations which still, in theory, permit the monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, save in a dire political emergency or upon the advice of their government. While the power to veto a law by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.
From 1 April 1974 there was a realignment of civil parish boundaries, and a new parish was created:
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government, they are a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of ecclesiastical parishes which historically played a role in both civil and ecclesiastical administration; civil and religious parishes were formally split into two types in the 19th century and are now entirely separate. The unit was devised and rolled out across England in the 1860s.
- Charlwood in Mole Valley district
- Horley in Reigate and Banstead district
- Salfords and Sidlow: created from parts of Charlwood and Horley parishes, and included in Reigate and Banstead
Mole Valley is a local government district in Surrey, England. Its council is based in Dorking.
Reigate and Banstead is a local government district with borough status in East Surrey, England. It includes the towns of Reigate, Redhill, Horley and Banstead. The borough borders the Borough of Crawley to the south, the Borough of Epsom and Ewell and District of Mole Valley to the west, Tandridge District to the east and the London Boroughs of Sutton and Croydon to the north.
Salfords and Sidlow is a civil parish in the Reigate and Banstead borough of Surrey, England. It has a population of 3,069. The parish includes the villages of Salfords and Sidlow.
The portion included in West Sussex became part of the unparished area of Crawley district.
