Have you ever wondered why London has exactly 32 boroughs? Not 5, or 20, or even 100, but 32? Well luckily for you, we’ve done our homework – with some help from Jay Foreman, who broke everything down in his handy YouTube video. And now we’re here to give you all the deets.
London hasn’t always had 32 boroughs. In fact, before 1965 Greater London had a staggering 86 different authorities. Now, these 86 authorities had originally been around for a long old time, and many were based on ancient church parishes that date back to the Middle Ages. However, having so many different local authorities proved to be quite cumbersome.
This was made particularly evident in the small area of North Woolwich, which ended up with a primary school run by the County Borough of East Ham, emergency services run by the County Borough of West Ham, public baths and libraries run by the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, and a secondary school run by London County Council. And all of them were just five minutes away from each other. It doesn’t take much to imagine the absolute chaos that this would have caused.
Fortunately, to solve similar issues, it was agreed in 1965 that the existing 86 authorities would be concentrated into 32 London boroughs. Huzzah! However, simply deciding to create those 32 boroughs turned out to be far easier than the task itself…
Mergine the boroughs
To cut the number of boroughs in London by over half, existing areas would have to merge to make new combinations of boroughs. But as you can imagine, this wasn’t exactly a popular decision with all the boroughs. Rival boroughs like West Ham and East Ham were furious over the choice to merge the two areas, and certain boroughs had preferences over who they would have liked to be merged with.
Perhaps most controversial of all was the uniting of Wembley and Willesden. Despite sitting side-by-side, the two boroughs were very different indeed. On the one hand, there was Wembley, which was a mostly Tory-voting suburban borough. And on the other was Willesden, a mostly Labour-voting urban neighbourhood. Residents were infuriated with the match, but nothing could be done about it.
Picking a name
As if that wasn’t enough, they also had to name these new boroughs! The boroughs were given the chance to come up with suggestions themselves. In most cases, they simply chose one of the existing names. Typically this was based on the borough with the highest population, or the borough with the most historical significance.
But others made the job more difficult. For example, the suggestions for the new borough comprising West and East Ham included Hamstrung, Ham Sandwich, and (my personal favourite) Ham Sweet Ham. In the case of boroughs that couldn’t come up with suitable names for themselves, the council made the final decision.
Some authorities wanted the new borough to use both existing names, but these suggestions were largely opposed by the council. Largely, that is, apart from one. It was only the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea that kept both names, resulting in the incredibly long official title of ‘The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.’
Phew – what a mammoth task the whole thing turned out to be! Let’s not bother with that again – agreed? Good.