Brian Wilson: How local government lost its way - and why it matters to us all
As 50th anniversaries go, today is quite a big one in the annals of how Scotland is governed. At the stroke of midnight on May 16th 1975, it was a case of out with the old and in with the new.
Royal burghs stretching back into the mists of time were no more. Corporations, county councils, town councils, district councils were consigned to history. Provosts’ robes and chains of office went into the local museums.
And out of this, there emerged the brave new era of Scotland’s large Regional Councils and a new breed of second-tier Districts. Three island groups – Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles – were allowed to escape from the two-tier format as freestanding authorities.
Maybe there is so little commemoration of this historic transition because it produced a structure for delivery that was so conspicuously better than what we have today – more strategic, more powers, more money, more innovative, Where did it all go wrong?
The new settlement reflected an extraordinary degree of political consensus and, particularly from the Tories, a significant level of magnanimity. Ultimately, it was they who introduced legislation which transformed how their strongholds in rural Scotland were run, as parts of large Labour regions.
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