[Talk-GB] boundary mania

[Mark Goodge]

On 26/08/2018 21:36, Colin Smale wrote:
> On 2018-08-26 21:17, David Woolley wrote:
> 
>> It looks to me as though boundaries can be defined recursively, so 
>> Hampshire, rather than its bounding ways, ought to to be the object 
>> referenced in the bigger entities.
> This wouldn't work in the case of civil parishes as components of 
> districts and UA's though. You cannot define a district as the union of 
> the parishes. There are unparished areas, detached parts and "lands 
> common" which complicate the model. However I believe every point in the 
> UK is within some district/UA, and every district is within a county, 
> giving 100% coverage at that level.


Every point is within a district, but not every district is within a 
county - unless, that is, you consider a unitary authority to be 
effectively two different entities that happen to have identical boundaries.

 From a legal perspective, districts (or boroughs, cities and unitary 
authorities) are the fundamental building blocks of British local 
government. Parishes or communities, where they exist, are subdivisions 
of districts. Counties or metropolitan authorities, where they exist, 
are unions of districts. The district is the "principal authority" 
defined in legislation, everything else is relative to it.

(As an aside, this is also one of the big drivers of nostalgia for the 
pre-1974 "historic" counties. The Victorian system had the county as the 
fundamental unit. So even where we still have counties, they are not the 
same as they used to be).

Mark