Talk:Metropolitan county

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[edit] Established

when where the MCs established? 1974?

Yes. Arwel 10:52, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Apart from Greater London which was created in about 1965 G-Man 11:00, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

yes, but Greater London's not technically the same thing as a Metropolitan County. Arwel 11:15, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Weren't at least some of the local government elections held at the end of 1973, so that councillors could 'hit the ground running' in May 1974?...garryq 16:23, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Metropolitan counties were judged to be a success?

How can this be true? The abolition of the two-tier system, and hence any kind of stragic "metropolitan" value these entities had, was already being planned only nine years after their creation. What was left was a series of unitary authorities, and a mess of joint boards instead of the grand unified "metropolitan" plan. This is no better than what was in place prior to their creation — in fact it is exactly the same. What it has done though is leave a legacy of confused identity in the areas that this grand expriment was conducted in. I would hardly call that a success. The assertion that two major regorganisations of government in twelve years to leave the situation worse than it was before "is a success" has no citation and is demonstrably untrue. Owain 18:36, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

From what I recall reading somewhere, in the 1990s the government looked at abolishing the met counties entirely as they did with Humberside, Avon etc, but decided against it because they had 'caught on' amongst the public, and recommended keeping them in their post-1986 form. I dont know if I can find a source for that, but I remeber hearing it somewhere. As everyone knows the abolition of the MCCs was entirely politically motivated, as the high-spend Labour administrations clashed with Thatcherism, and had little to do with 'administrative efficiency' or whatever was claimed. From what I've read the government is considering bringing the met counties (or something similar) back into administrative use, but renaming them as city regions. In a similar vein to what they've done in Greater London with the GLA. G-Man 18:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes. Abolishing them entirely would just be a paper exercise though as they don't actually have any direct administrative functions. This is why I would suggest the wording of them being "a success" is a little over-stated. Perhaps "there being no need to" would be better. Also without any public opinion polls it would be hard to assert that they have universally "caught on" either. There are certainly groups of people in the Wirral who object very stongly to associations with Liverpool, and people in towns in "South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire" with separate identities from Manchester! Owain 11:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] OS maps

Actually I wonder why ordnance survey maps have stopped showing the met counties. It seems to have been a recent thing. I have an OS map of the Greater Manchester area from 1993, some seven years after the county council's demise, which shows Gtr Manchester. I have seen the latest version of the map from 2005 which only shows the Met boroughs. I wonder why this has been done? Are the OS under the false impression that the Met counties no longer exist or something? Can anyone shed some light on this. G-Man * 23:36, 8 November 2006 (UTC)