The Heath Government and the Local Government Act 1972 Dr David Jeffery, University of Liverpool This chapter will be appearing in Policies and Politics Under Prime Minister Edward Heath, edited by Andrew Roe-Crines and Timothy Heppell (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030536725) If somebody came from the moon and created a new place called Britain and they recommended for us a system of local government as it is today, we would certainly consider that they needed their heads looking at. - Peter Walker ((1969), in Chandler, 2013) It is axiomatic that anyone who speaks on local government reform who does not have to wants his head examining. - Harold Wilson (HC Deb 6 July 1972, vol 840, col 899) The Local Government Act 1972 is not explicable in terms of democratic idealism, nor of professional realism, nor of administrative efficiency or convenience, nor yet of political manipulation and party dogma, nor even of Anglo-Saxon muddle headedness, though, of course, it owes much to all of these. The fact is that it has a Past. - Arnold-Baker (1973, p. 1) Introduction The Local Government Act 1972 is “one of the few innovations of the Heath Government which has lasted; it also remains among the most unpopular.” (Campbell, 2013, p. 379) Although the reform outlasted the main constitutional legislation passed during the Heath government - the European Communities Act 1972 - it has slowly been unpicked by consecutive governments who saw the reforms as sub-optimal. This chapter explores three interrelated issues: why reform local government in the first place, what the Heath government’s reforms achieved, how they were justified. For some, the Local Government Act 1972 was held as “a radical and progressive reorganisation of the antiquated structure of local government in England and Wales”, and the “first major systematic and comprehensive measure