Local Government (Boundaries) Act 1887

Local Government (Boundaries) Act 1887
	Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long title	An Act for appointing Commissioners to inquire and report as to the Boundaries of certain Areas of Local Government in England.
Citation	50 & 51 Vict. c. 61
Territorial extent	England and Wales
Dates
Royal assent	16 September 1887
Commencement	16 September 1887
Other legislation
Repealed by	Statute Law Revision Act 1908
Status: Repealed

Last updated May 14, 2019

The Local Government (Boundaries) Act 1887 (50 & 51 Vict. c. 61) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act established boundary commissioners to reform the areas of administrative bodies in England and Wales in preparation for the creation of elected councils by the Local Government Act 1888. In the event, the recommendations of the commissioners were not carried out.

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.

England and Wales is a legal jurisdiction covering England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom. ’England and Wales’ forms the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England and follows a single legal system, known as English law.

Background

By the 1880s the issue of county government had become a major political issue. Both the Liberal and Conservative party manifestos for the 1886 general election contained promises to introduce elected local authorities.^[1] Following the election the Conservatives formed an administration led by Lord Salisbury with the support of the breakaway Liberal Unionists. Charles Ritchie became President of the Local Government Board and responsible for carrying forward the reforms. One of the most pressing issues was the necessity of boundary changes: counties in many cases had very irregular boundaries, and the lower-level units such as boroughs, parishes, poor law unions and sanitary districts often lay in more than one county.

The Liberal Party was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom with the opposing Conservative Party in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American and French Revolutions in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and then won a landslide victory in the following year's general election.

The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. The governing party since 2010, it is the largest in the House of Commons, with 313 Members of Parliament, and also has 249 members of the House of Lords, 18 members of the European Parliament, 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 8,916 local councillors.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury,, styled Lord Robert Cecil before 1865, Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until April 1868, and Lord Salisbury until his death, was a British statesman, serving as Prime Minister three times for a total of over thirteen years. A member of the Conservative Party, he was the last Prime Minister to head his full administration from the House of Lords.

The Act

The Act received the royal assent on 16 September 1887. Section 2 of the Act constituted five named persons as The Boundary Commissioners for England and Wales. The commissioners were Earl Brownlow, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Baon Basing, John Selwin-Ibbotsen, Bt, MP and John Tomlinson Hibbert, three of whom formed a quorum.

Royal assent Formal approval of a proposed law in monarchies

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.

Adelbert Wellington Brownlow-Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow, was a British soldier, courtier and Conservative politician.

Edmond George Petty-Fitzmaurice, 1st Baron Fitzmaurice, PC, styled Lord Edmond FitzMaurice from 1863 to 1906, was a British Liberal politician. He served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1883 to 1885 and again from 1905 to 1908, when he entered the cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under H. H. Asquith. However, illness forced him to resign the following year.

The commissioners were to proceed, as soon as the Act was passed, to inquire in respect of each county in England and Wales:

To find the best mode of adjusting boundaries of counties and other local government areas so that no union, borough, sanitary district or parish lay in more than one county.
To find the best mode of dealing with detached parts of counties.
To find the best mode for making the boundaries of boroughs and sanitary districts coincide.
To make administrative arrangements consequential to boundary changes and combination existing areas.

The commissioners were to have "due regard to financial and administrative considerations" in their recommendations. They were permitted to make local inquiries and appoint assistant commissioners to further their work. Their report was to be made to the Local Government Board and laid before parliament.

The area to be reviewed by the commissioners was the whole of England and Wales, except the part under the supervision of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The "counties" to be reviewed were not to include any county of a city or county of a town, but each county, including a riding, division or part for which separate quarter sessions were held.

The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of London-wide government from December 1855 until the establishment of the London County Council in March 1889. Its principal responsibility was to provide infrastructure to cope with London's rapid growth, which it accomplished. The MBW was an appointed rather than elected body. This lack of accountability made it unpopular with Londoners, especially in its latter years when it fell prey to corruption.

A county corporate or corporate county was a type of subnational division used for local government in England, Ireland, and Wales.

The commissioners were required to complete their work by 31 December 1888 unless extended by parliament.

The work of the boundary commissioners

It was anticipated that the commissioners would make substantial changes to county boundaries, with counties being formed by groupings of poor law unions which included towns and their rural hinterland. The commissioners were expected to face opposition to altering boundaries that were perceived to date back centuries and mark the limits of ancient entities such as the kingdoms of the heptarchy.^[2]^[3]

The Heptarchy is a collective name applied to the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century until their unification into the Kingdom of England in the early 10th century.

The commissioners divided England and Wales into five areas, with each commissioner taking responsibility for one area. Lord Brownlow took charge of central England, Lord Fitzmaurice: western England and Wales, Lord Basing: southern England, Sir H Selwin-Ibbetson: eastern England while Mr Hibbert was in charge of northern England. The principal commissioners appointed assistant commissioners to carry out detailed enquiries in the various localities and to elicit public opinion. By the end of January 1888, they had carried out three months of enquiries. The bodies concerned were consulted, and not all were opposed to boundary changes, with some making counter-proposals to those of the commissioners.

The justices of Wiltshire sought extensive territory changes with Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Somerset.^[4]
The Highway Committee of the West Riding of Yorkshire was in favour of taking over parts of Lincolnshire.^[4]
The justices of Flintshire approved a merger with Denbighshire, a move only rejected by the magistrates of the latter county by a single vote.^[5]
The commission's proposal to constitute the borough of Birmingham a county of itself, and to make large extensions to the municipal boundaries were approved by the borough council. The enlarged boundary would take in Aston Manor in Warwickshire and surrounding areas of Worcestershire.^[6]
It was proposed that Cambridgeshire's boundaries should be readjusted to match those of the poor law unions, thus exchanging territory with Huntingdonshire and Hertfordshire. The Cambridgeshire quarter sessions accepted most of the changes, with the exception of those for the south of the county. This would have involved the transfer of 17 parishes in the Royston Union, and the Cambridgeshire part of the town of Royston itself, to Hertfordshire. The Cambridgeshire justices instead called for the Hertfordshire portion of the union to be included in their county.^[7]
A substantial realignment of the boundaries of the Isle of Ely, Norfolk and Suffolk was proposed. The part of Wisbech Union in Norfolk (roughly the hundred of Freebridge Marshland) would be placed in the Isle, while the Suffolk portion of Thetford Union (the Brandon area) would pass to Norfolk.^[7]

Wiltshire is a county in South West England with an area of 3,485 km². It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The county town was originally Wilton, after which the county is named, but Wiltshire Council is now based in the county town of Trowbridge.

Berkshire is one of the home counties in England. It was recognised by the Queen as the Royal County of Berkshire in 1957 because of the presence of Windsor Castle, and letters patent were issued in 1974. Berkshire is a county of historic origin, a ceremonial county and a non-metropolitan county without a county council. The county town is Reading.

Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean.

By March 1888 the commissioners had issued their preliminary schemes to the various local authorities in each county, and local inquiries were to be held to hear objections before the preparation of the final report. The proposed alterations in county boundaries was generally smaller than had been expected. The Liberty of Ripon was to be merged with the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the Soke of Peterborough with Northamptonshire. Adjustments were to be made between the ridings of Yorkshire and between East and West Sussex, while the detached Maelor area of Flintshire was to become part of Denbighshire.

On the issue of towns that were divided by county boundaries, they were to be placed entirely in a single county. Most were to be incorporated in the county in which most of the population lay, but the commissioners made seven recommendations against this rule:

East Barnet to be entirely in Middlesex
Filey to be in the North Riding of Yorkshire
Llandrillo yn Rhos to be in Denbighshire
Newmarket to be in Cambridgeshire
Peterborough to be in Huntingdonshire
Stamford to be in Northamptonshire
Tamworth to be in Warwickshire

The Borough of Dudley, a detached part of Worcestershire, was to be united with the rest of the county by the transfer of an intervening portion of Staffordshire.^[8]

Parliamentary reaction

Even though the commissioners had yet to finish their work it became clear that the government was unwilling to carry out their recommendations. The Local Government Bill passing through parliament was amended with a number of boundary clauses. The effect was that the new county councils would be established on the existing parliamentary counties. Following their election, the new councils were to consider the reports of the Commission and adjust the county boundaries themselves by agreement with the Local Government Board, also establishing the areas for district councils to be elected in January 1890.^[9]

The commissioners made their report in August 1888.^[10] The report was dismissed by Ritchie, who decried what he saw as the "wholesale destruction of county boundaries" in the recommendations. In particular, he noted that the consequent changes to the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies were likely to be unpopular with MPs, and might lead to the rejection of the Local Government Bill then going through parliament.^[1]

Instead, the clauses in the bill creating district councils and requiring boundary alterations were removed, and a section was incorporated that required the relevant county report of the commissioners to be laid before each newly constituted county or county borough council. Each council was to make proposals on boundary alterations in view of the report and forward them to the Local Government Board.^[11] In practice, very few changes were made. Four months after the county councils were elected, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, admitted in the Lords that due to the "time that must necessarily be occupied" by the process, no reports would be ready for approval in that parliamentary session.^[12]

Later changes

The question of adjusting county boundaries was revisited in 1894, when the Local Government Act of that year created urban and rural districts. It was admitted that the expected rectification of boundaries in 1889 had not occurred and that the boundaries clauses of the Local Government Act 1888 had proved a "dead letter". The 1894 Act included stronger wording that required county councils to "as soon as practicable" review the county boundaries to ensure that the new districts lay in a single county.^[13] Accordingly, there were many alterations over the next few years. It was only after the abolition of poor law unions in 1930 that it was finally possible to rationalise local government areas by county review orders carried out under the Local Government Act 1929.

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References

1 2 J P D Dunbabin, British Local Government Reform: The Nineteenth Century and after in The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 365. (October 1977), pp. 777-805.
↑ "Leader". The Times. October 31, 1887.
↑ "County boundaries". The Times. November 2, 1887.
1 2 The Times, January 13, 1888
↑ "The Boundaries Bill". The Times. March 15, 1888.
↑ The Times, January 4, 1889
1 2 The Times, January 6, 1888
↑ "The Boundary Commission". The Times. March 28, 1888.
↑ Edmond Fitzmaurice, "The Boundary Clauses of the Local Government Bill", Letter to the editor of the Times, May 31, 1889
↑ Report of the Boundary Commissioners of England and Wales, 1888, volume 1, C.360
↑ Local Government Act 1888 S.53
↑ Parliament: The County Councils and the Boundaries Commissioners, The Times, May 18, 1889
↑ The Times, January 6, 1894

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[dunl-1] 1 2 J P D Dunbabin, British Local Government Reform: The Nineteenth Century and after in The English Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 365. (October 1977), pp. 777-805.

[2] "Leader". The Times. October 31, 1887.

[3] "County boundaries". The Times. November 2, 1887.

[jan13-4] 1 2 The Times, January 13, 1888

[5] "The Boundaries Bill". The Times. March 15, 1888.

[6] The Times, January 4, 1889

[Jan6-7] 1 2 The Times, January 6, 1888

[8] "The Boundary Commission". The Times. March 28, 1888.

[edf-9] Edmond Fitzmaurice, "The Boundary Clauses of the Local Government Bill", Letter to the editor of the Times, May 31, 1889

[10] Report of the Boundary Commissioners of England and Wales, 1888, volume 1, C.360

[11] Local Government Act 1888 S.53

[12] Parliament: The County Councils and the Boundaries Commissioners, The Times, May 18, 1889

[13] The Times, January 6, 1894