INTRODUCTION

Prior to 1975, local government in Scotland represented a distinctly Scottish set of institutions. The roots of Scottish local government can be traced back to the royal burghs of the Middle Ages and was one of the items guaranteed in the Treaty of Union in 1707. Prior to 1929, Scottish local government consisted primarily of royal burghs, which were typically small towns or villages that organised trade and basic services within communities, and county councils established in 1889. As the functions of local government expanded, notably during the nineteenth century, the demand for a more systematic structure of local government developed. This resulted in the complex structure of 430 local authorities established in 1929, which consisted of thirty-three county councils and four counties of cities (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen), twenty-one large burghs, generally those with a population of 20,000 people or more, 176 small burghs and 196 landward district councils. In 1975, there were fifty-seven Scottish local planning authorities, comprising thirty-one counties (two of them joint), twenty-four large burghs and two small burghs, with planning powers under the 1947 Act, ranging in size and character from the City of Glasgow, with over one million people, to the County of Sutherland, with 13,500 people scattered over 2,000 square miles. In the four Border counties of Berwickshire, Peeblesshire, Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire, there were twelve small burghs: Coldstream, Duns, Eyemouth and Lauder in Berwickshire; Innerleithen and Peebles in Peeblesshire, Hawick, Jedburgh, Kelso and Melrose in Roxburghshire; and Galashiels and Selkirk in Selkirkshire. Planning powers were held solely by the four county councils.

By the mid-1960s, the generally held view was that there was a need to reform local government in Scotland. The multiplicity of local authorities, many of them serving small areas and small populations were inefficient. As population had migrated to the towns and cities as a result of the Industrial Revolution and these towns and cities had expanded into the surrounding countryside, boundary anomalies caused friction between neighbouring authorities. Also, given the emerging culture of regional, economic and strategic planning in the 1960s, pressure developed behind the concept of larger, regional local authorities that could improve service provision.