Counties as homes

SIR – It is not unexpected that Lord Heseltine should defend the Local Government Act 1972, which he pushed through (“Heseltine: Historic counties overhaul was not far enough”, report, April 1). Whatever its merits for the conduct of local administration, what it did to maps was a scandal.

According to Lord Heseltine’s geography, I was born in two places at once and took my first steps in a town I have never visited, while the good folk who believe they live in Berkshire are told they are fantasising. It is a nonsense for describing real places.

A bureaucracy set up to empty the bins cannot define what we call home, as Lord Heseltine’s own department acknowledged: “They are administrative areas and will not alter the traditional boundaries of counties, nor is it intended that the loyalties of people living in them will change.” Had Edward Heath’s government followed through on this, leaving maps and road signs to show real, historic counties and not these plastic conveniences, we would’ve been happier.

In the event, the 1972 Act did not last: its assumptions have been mauled beyond recognition, so that only a small minority of people are governed by the structures it established. It is high time for this Act to go.

Rupert Barnes

Vice-chairman, Association of British Counties

Croxley Green, Hertfordshire

SIR – When I lived in Southport, my bank in Yorkshire, aware that our family felt that we lived in Lancashire despite boundary changes suggesting otherwise, always addressed statements to me at “Southport, Merseyside, Lancs”.

Trevor Ogden Dunblane, Perthshire