In my time as the King's chief minister I had occasion to redraw many boundaries — of dioceses, of monastic estates, of the lands that passed to the Crown upon the dissolution. In every case I found the same truth: that a boundary well drawn, upon lines that the people understand and accept, will hold for centuries, while one drawn for the convenience of the moment will be resented, resisted, and in time undone.
The present government hath embarked upon a programme of creating unitary authorities across England — single councils in place of the old two-tier arrangement of county and district. This is well enough in principle. But the question of how these new councils are drawn, and what they are called, is of no small consequence. A council that beareth the name of its county and followeth lines that make sense to the people who live within it will command a loyalty that no administrative creation, however efficient, can manufacture.
These proposals set down the principles by which unitary authorities should be drawn: of what size, by what name, and with what regard to the older divisions of the land. They are to be read alongside Item IV, which addresseth the strategic authorities under which these councils sit, and Item VI, which treateth of London separately.
I. Drawing the Boundaries
How counties should be divided into single-tier councils.
Within each strategic authority, the operational unit of local government should be a unitary authority — a single-tier council responsible for all local services, from social care to bin collection. The government's current programme of local government reorganisation is moving decisively in this direction, replacing the two-tier county-and-district system across England. The question is not whether this will happen but how well the new unitaries are drawn.
The government has set an informal population floor of roughly 250,000 for new unitary authorities, though it has been willing to go somewhat below this where geography demands it. This is a reasonable starting point. A unitary authority much smaller than this struggles to deliver complex services like adult social care efficiently; one much larger than about 600,000 risks becoming too remote from the communities it serves. Within those bounds, the drawing of boundaries should be guided by local geography, patterns of economic life and — wherever possible — historic identity.
Where the government has already announced its decisions on local government reorganisation, this proposal endorses the resulting pattern in broad terms and uses it as the basis for the unitary structure within each strategic authority. Where decisions have not yet been made, the same principles should apply: unitaries of viable size, named by county with a geographic prefix where subdivision is necessary and aligned as closely as possible with historic boundaries.
The following worked examples show how this operates in practice, drawing on the government's decisions of March 2026.
Essex — five unitary authorities from April 2028: West Essex (Epping Forest, Harlow, Uttlesford — c. 330,000), North East Essex (Colchester, Braintree, Tendring — c. 520,000), Mid Essex (Chelmsford, Brentwood, Maldon — c. 340,000), South West Essex (Basildon, Thurrock — c. 375,000) and South East Essex (Southend, Castle Point, Rochford — c. 365,000). The naming convention is geographic — compass points plus county name — which this proposal endorses. The pattern broadly respects the geography of the county: the western districts that face London, the Colchester-centred north east, the Chelmsford administrative centre with its hinterland and the two Thames estuary authorities in the south.
Norfolk is a large rural county with one significant urban centre, and the government's decision to create three unitaries reflects that geography. Norwich gets its own authority — Greater Norwich, drawing in surrounding parishes from Broadland and South Norfolk to reach c. 290,000 — while the rest of the county divides into West Norfolk (c. 310,000, centred on King's Lynn and Breckland) and East Norfolk (c. 340,000, covering Great Yarmouth, North Norfolk and the rural remainder). The "Greater Norwich" label is a small departure from the pure geographic prefix, but it follows an established convention for cities that absorb their immediate hinterland.
Suffolk — three unitaries: Western Suffolk (West Suffolk, parts of Mid Suffolk, parts of Babergh — c. 270,000), Central and Eastern Suffolk (East Suffolk, remainder of Mid Suffolk — c. 260,000) and Ipswich and South Suffolk (Ipswich, parts of Babergh and East Suffolk — c. 255,000). The Ipswich-centred southern authority departs slightly from the geographic prefix convention but reflects the town's economic dominance of its hinterland.
Of the March 2026 decisions, Hampshire is the most complex. With a population exceeding two million, it requires four unitaries, and the government has drawn these through parish-level boundary adjustments that cross existing district lines: North Hampshire (Basingstoke and Deane, Hart, Rushmoor), Mid Hampshire (Winchester, Test Valley, parts of East Hampshire and New Forest), South East Hampshire (Fareham, Gosport, Havant, Portsmouth and adjacent parishes) and South West Hampshire (Eastleigh, Southampton and adjacent parishes). The Isle of Wight remains a separate unitary. The geographic naming is sound, but the parish transfers make the boundaries harder to describe than those in Essex or Surrey — an inevitable consequence of dividing a very large county where districts do not fall neatly into compass-point groupings.
Surrey — two unitaries from April 2027, the earliest of the current round: East Surrey (Elmbridge, Mole Valley, Epsom and Ewell, Reigate and Banstead, Tandridge — c. 564,000) and West Surrey (Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Runnymede, Woking, Guildford, Waverley — c. 685,000). A clean east-west split along a natural geographic line. This should serve as the template for other counties where a simple two-way division is sufficient.
Sussex — the government deferred its decision in March 2026, inviting modified proposals. The county is historically a single entity; the East-West division is a later convenience. The likely outcome is three unitaries, with Brighton and Hove continuing as one. Whatever boundaries emerge, they should carry the county name: West Sussex, East Sussex and Brighton, not arbitrary sub-regional brands. The deferral also leaves open the question of whether Sussex will have its own strategic authority or be grouped with another county — an outcome that would be regrettable given its size and distinct identity.
These examples illustrate the general pattern. For counties where the government has not yet announced a decision — Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Devon, Kent, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire — the same principles apply. The eventual number of unitaries in each county will depend on population, geography and the outcome of local consultation, but the approach should be consistent: viable population, geographic naming and boundaries that respect the historic county.
II. Naming
Subdividing counties without losing their names.
Within each strategic authority, local government should be delivered by unitary authorities — single-tier councils responsible for all local services. The current government's programme of local government reorganisation is already moving in this direction, replacing the two-tier system of county and district councils with unitaries across England. This is welcome. The question is how these unitaries are drawn and what they are called.
Where a county is subdivided into multiple unitaries, each should be named using the county name with a geographic prefix. The government's recent decisions have, in several cases, already adopted this approach: West Norfolk, East Norfolk and Greater Norwich; West Surrey and East Surrey; North Hampshire, Mid Hampshire and South West Hampshire. This convention should be applied consistently. It preserves the county identity, makes geographic sense to residents and avoids the invention of meaningless names that attach to nothing in particular.
Where a historic county name has been absorbed — Huntingdonshire into Cambridgeshire, for example — the creation of unitaries offers an opportunity to restore it. A unitary authority covering the area of the former county of Huntingdonshire should be called Huntingdonshire, not "West Cambridgeshire" or some other euphemism. The same principle applies to Rutland, which should retain its name as a unitary within any Leicestershire strategic authority, and to Westmorland, whose name has been preserved in the recently created Westmorland and Furness Council.
III. Historic Subdivisions as Boundary Guides
Using Hundreds, Rapes, Lathes and Wapentakes to inform the map.
England's counties were themselves divided into smaller units long before the creation of district councils in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Hundreds (the most common term), Rapes (in Sussex), Lathes (in Kent) and Wapentakes (in the Danelaw counties) served as administrative, judicial and military subdivisions from the Anglo-Saxon period onwards. They fell out of formal use in the Victorian era but their boundaries are well documented and, in many cases, still correspond to recognisable geographic areas.
The government's current approach to drawing unitary boundaries treats the existing district councils as the building blocks — grouping whole districts, or in some cases splitting them at parish level. This is pragmatic but historically arbitrary: the districts themselves date only from 1974 and their boundaries often bear no relationship to older patterns of settlement and geography. The question is whether the older subdivisions might provide a better guide — not as a rigid rule, but as a constraint on where lines should be drawn.
The answer depends on geography. In areas where the settlement pattern has not changed dramatically since the medieval period, Hundreds can produce modern unitary groupings almost by accident. In heavily urbanised areas, where twentieth-century growth has created entirely new population centres, the old boundaries bear no useful relationship to modern reality.
Essex illustrates both sides of this. The county has nineteen historic Hundreds, and the government's five new unitaries align well with them in the north and west. North East Essex maps closely onto three large Hundreds — Tendring (the Clacton and Harwich peninsula), Lexden (the Colchester area) and Hinckford (the Braintree area). West Essex similarly captures the Hundreds of Harlow, Uttlesford and Freshwell in a coherent grouping. Had the Hundreds been used as indivisible building blocks, the boundaries in these areas would look much the same as those the government has drawn.
The south of the county tells a different story. Barstable Hundred — one of the largest in Essex, running from what is now Basildon down to Southend — is split in half by the boundary between South West Essex and South East Essex. The government has grouped Basildon with Thurrock (historically in Chafford Hundred) and Southend with Castle Point and Rochford. From the perspective of the Hundreds this is a mess. From the perspective of modern economic geography it makes sense: Thurrock and Basildon share a Thames estuary character that Southend does not. Basildon is a New Town, built in the 1940s on land that was open marshland when the Hundreds were drawn. The Hundred boundary tells you nothing useful about where people now live and work.
The practical conclusion is this: historic subdivisions can usefully inform boundary-drawing in areas where the older settlement pattern remains broadly intact, but they should not be treated as a universal rule. In rural and semi-rural counties — and in counties with subdivisions of particular antiquity and local recognition, such as Kent's Lathes or Sussex's Rapes — they offer a stronger basis for boundaries than the 1974 district lines. In urbanised areas the modern geography has to take precedence. Where the government's boundaries cut across a historic subdivision, the departure should be noted and the historic name preserved in local usage even if it does not appear on the council's letterhead.
The London boroughs, addressed separately in Item VI, are a special case. There, the Hundreds of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex provide the primary organising framework for a proposed reorganisation, precisely because London's Hundreds happen to be of the right scale and geographic coherence for modern borough-level government. That model works for London. It does not generalise to the rest of England without the qualifications set out above.