Association of British Counties - Aims and Objectives

Aims and Objectives

The ABC has declared that it does not want further local government reorganisation. Instead it would rather see an official distinction made between current administrative units known as counties, and those areas known as counties prior to the local government reforms of 1965 and 1974, which were not abolished.

It seeks to bring about an official change in government terminology to bring it in line with its interpretation of the Local Government Act 1888 — the original piece of legislation which created the county councils in England and Wales, though there have since been several further changes. The Act specifically called the areas it created "administrative counties" (although it also amended what it called the "counties"), and the ABC wishes to see this terminology consistently used to describe them. Also it wishes to see the term "county" stripped from the unitary authorities that use it, a measure which it claims will remove what it sees as confusion resulted from the status of various entities termed counties since 1888. In particular, ABC uses scare quotes around the word "county" when not referring to the counties as defined by them.

Other policies include:

• compelling the Ordnance Survey to mark the historic county borders on their maps
• lobbying for the erection of boundary signs at these boundaries
• making the ceremonial counties match the boundaries of the historic counties they promote
• that the English regions should be redefined in order to ensure that the counties as they describe them should "be brought wholly within one region or another"