Legislation
1889
In Scotland, local government counties were created under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889. The 1889 legislation created county councils, turned each civil county (with one exception) into a contiguous area (without separate fragments) and adjusted boundaries where civil parishes straddled county boundaries, or had fragments in more than one county. The counties of Ross and Cromarty were merged to form Ross and Cromarty.
1973
Under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, local government counties, cities and their subordinate councils (including burghs and parishes) were abolished and replaced by an upper tier of Regions each of which contained a number of Districts except for the Western Isles, Shetland Islands and Orkney Islands where each had a single-tier authority created which exercised all the powers elsewhere split across two levels of local government. Two of the three islands authorities - Orkney and Shetland - changed their legal nature but continued with boundaries identical to the earlier counties; the Western Isles area was previously split between Invernessshire and Ross and Cromarty.
1996
The regions and districts were themselves abolished in 1996, under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, in favour of a single tier of Councils. Although Scottish Councils are now unitary in nature none is a Unitary Authority as in the United Kingdom that phrase is specific to English local government legislation.
One region and various of the districts created in 1975 had areas similar to those of earlier counties. Various council areas created in 1996 continued to do so with some new areas also resembling pre-1975 areas or simple divisions of them (e.g. South Lanarkshire and North Lanarkshire). Apart from their legal nature, the three islands authorities continued with their previous boundaries and most of their powers unaltered.
Read more about this topic: Council Area
Famous quotes containing the word legislation:
“But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The laboring man and the trade-unionist, if I understand him, asks only equality before the law. Class legislation and unequal privilege, though expressly in his favor, will in the end work no benefit to him or to society.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)