History of Salford - Governance

Governance

Salford was anciently part of the Manchester parish of the Salford Hundred, an area much larger than the present-day city of Salford, within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire. A stroke of a Norman baron's pen is said to have divorced Manchester and Salford, although it was not Salford that became separated from Manchester, but Manchester, with its humbler line of lords, that was separated from Salford. Salford received its town charter from Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, then Lord of the Manor, in 1230. From then until 1791, when police commissioners were appointed, it was governed by a reeve, a medieval administrator and law enforcement official. It was not recognised as a borough in the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, but was granted borough status in 1844; the new Salford borough was made up of the township of Salford and part of Broughton. The remainder of Broughton, and a part of Pendlebury, were added in 1853.

When the administrative county of Lancashire was created by the Local Government Act 1888, Salford was elevated to become the County Borough of Salford and was, in modern terms, a unitary authority area exempt from the administration of Lancashire County Council. Following a campaign supported by William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary and MP for a neighbouring constituency of Manchester, city status was granted to the county borough by letters patent dated 21 April 1926. This was in spite of the opposition of civil servants in the Home Office who dismissed the borough as "merely a scratch collection of 240,000 people cut off from Manchester by the river". In 1961 a small part of the Municipal Borough of Eccles was added to the city, and in 1966, Salford was twinned with Clermont-Ferrand in France.

In 1974 the City and County Borough of Salford was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, and was replaced by the metropolitan borough of City of Salford, a local government district of the new metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, with triple the territory of the former City of Salford, taking in neighbouring Eccles, Swinton & Pendlebury, Worsley and Irlam. Both Salford and the wider City of Salford are unparished areas.