Note (Back) — Chapter VIII

196. The Urban District.—Of areas within which are administered the local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several of distinct importance, although in reality the institutions of urban government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Municipal Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and a mass of subsequent and amending legislation. This great statute is supplemented at a number of points by the Local Government Act of 1888, the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894, the Education Act of 1902, and other regulative measures of the past thirty years. At the bottom of the scale among urban governmental units stands the urban district, which differs from an ordinary borough principally in that it has no charter and its council possesses less authority than does that of the borough.[269] The number of urban districts is in the neighborhood of eight hundred. Under the terms of the act of 1894 the governing authority in each is a council consisting of members elected for three years, women being eligible. There are no aldermen, and no mayor is chosen. The council elects its own chairman and other officers, and it meets at least once a month. Its functions, of which the most important is the control of sanitation and of highways, are discharged largely through the agency of committees. The district council possesses none of the police and judicial privileges which the borough councils commonly enjoy. It is more closely controlled by the Local Government Board, and, in general, it lacks "the status and ornamental trappings of a municipal authority.[270]" Yet in practice its powers are hardly less extensive than are those of the council of a full-fledged borough. New urban districts may be created in thickly populated localities by joint action of the county council and the Local Government Board.