STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

5.5 A considerable number of counties in England and Wales promoted Bills 8
containing comprehensive repeal schedules which implemented fully the scheme
underlying section 262(9) of the Local Government Act 1972. Other counties,
however, promoted Bills 9 which only repealed the provisions which they reenacted,
leaving much of their local legislation to lapse without being identified.
In some counties 10 no rationalising Bills were promoted at all; in others (as
mentioned below) certain district councils promoted Bills but not the county itself.
The overall effect of the initiative is therefore patchy and there is a need for it to
be supplemented by further repealing legislation.
5.6 In Hereford and Worcester only Hereford City Council and Worcester City
Council promoted rationalising Bills: the Hereford City Council Act 1985 (c.xlii)
and the Worcester City Council Act 1985 (c.xliii) respectively. These Acts had no
effect outside the areas of the councils concerned and did not repeal many of the
obsolete statutory undertaking provisions applying within their respective areas.
The proposals affecting Hereford and Worcester take account of the repeals
already effected by the Hereford City Council Act 1985 and the Worcester City
Council Act 1985.
5.7 The review of local legislation within the scope of this project has been carried
out in accordance with the same principles as were adopted for the review of
local authority legislation in South Yorkshire, in Bedfordshire, the City of
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, including the legislation of the
Derwent Valley Water Board, and, before that, for other major local authority
rationalisation Bills. 11 The review covers local Acts, provisional orders made on
the application of a local authority or which were subject to special parliamentary
procedure and other major orders forming an integral part of the legislation of
local authorities. It has two main objectives. The first is to identify the local
statutory provisions on which the cesser mechanism operated but which have not
been expressly repealed. Such repeals are needed for the purpose of resolving
uncertainties in an area of enacted law which is notorious for its uncertain
operation. A sophisticated system has been developed since 1974 12 to record the
extent to which local legislation remains in force but the detailed effects of the
cesser, as such, are in practice incapable of being recorded. The second main
objective is to repeal local statutory provisions which were exempted from the
8 See eg County of Merseyside Act 1980 (c.x); Cheshire County Council Act 1980 (c.xiii);
West Yorkshire Act 1980 (c.xiv); County of Lancashire Act 1984 (c.xxi).
9
See eg South Yorkshire Act 1980 (c.xxxvii); Greater Manchester Act 1981 (c.ix); County of
Avon Act 1982 (c.iv).
10 eg Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, West Sussex, Gloucestershire, Shropshire.
11 The West Yorkshire Act 1980 incorporated the results of a review of some 800 local Acts
and orders. For a discussion of the practical problems of promoting legislation of this type,
see
K F W Gumbley, Notes on Section 262 Bills (West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council,
1978).
12 The effect of local legislation passed between 1974 and the end of 1992 was recorded in
the Chronological Table of the Statutes (HMSO), Section 4. The information formerly
contained in Section 4 of that table has been included in the Chronological Table of Local
Legislation 1797-1994 prepared by the Law Commission and the Scottish Law
Commission (HMSO 1996) which records the effect of all local legislation passed since
1797.
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