Background
8.The White Paper set out the Government’s policy to enable elected regional assemblies to be established in regions (outside London) where the inhabitants of a region vote for one in a referendum. The decision on where a referendum will be held will be largely based on whether the Secretary of State considers that there is sufficient public interest in a region in holding one. So it may be that referendums on the establishment of a regional assembly are not held in all eight regions at one time. Indeed, it may be that in the first instance only one, two or three are held. The Act (additionally to what was proposed in the White Paper) further requires separate referendums to be held, in areas with two tiers of local government, about options for the reorganisation of local government into a single tier in the event of an elected assembly being established.
9.The White Paper proposed that, before a referendum on an elected assembly is to be held in a region, the Boundary Committee must first conduct a review of local government in that region. In areas that currently have a county council and district councils, a regional assembly would add a third tier of elected government below the national level, increasing the layers of government.
10.Under the Act, the Boundary Committee is required to review local government in a region before the holding of an assembly referendum there. However, in addition to what was set out in the White Paper on local government reviews, the Boundary Committee is to recommend at least two options for a single tier of local government in those parts of the region that currently have two tiers.
11.Between 1974 and 1986 a two-tier system of local government operated throughout the United Kingdom. Under a two-tier system, county councils are responsible for social services, strategic planning, education, refuse disposal, traffic, highways, libraries, fire and consumer protection. District councils are responsible for local planning, housing, leisure services and parks, markets and fairs, cemeteries and crematoria, tourism, electoral registration, environmental health and refuse collection.
12.In 1986, the Greater London Council and the six metropolitan county councils were abolished. Since then the London boroughs (in the capital) and metropolitan districts (in the six major conurbations of Tyne & Wear, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and the West Midlands) have formed a unitary tier of local government.
13.In the early 1990s, the Local Government Commission for England looked at the case for replacing the two-tier structure of local government with a unitary structure in the rest of England. As a result, a mixed system was established whereby some urban areas moved away from the two-tier system to a unitary structure, with one body responsible for all the local government functions previously carried out by district and county councils; other areas remained under the two-tier system. Around the same time, following public consultation in Scotland and an independent review in Wales, a unitary system was introduced in those nations.