‘A bad bargain for local authorities’: Goschen’s Assigned Revenues System and the Chiswick High Road, 1902-1911 Tracey Logan, University of Leicester, ([email protected]) Supervisors: Professor Simon Gunn and Professor Rosemary Sweet
Figure 1: A quiet lunchtime on Chiswick High Road (circa 1905).1
Considering a short-stretch of strategically-important highway in Greater London, this paper addresses the impact of a post-1888 financial settlement on local government which underfunded main roads in the pre-First World War decade. Chiswick High Road is a one and three-quarter mile (2.8 km) stretch of the ancient London to Bath ‘Great Western Road’, within the county of Middlesex. As a major London artery it had always been busy, but the turn-of-the-century separation of home and work life added commuters to the High Road’s business and pleasure traffic. This was especially true after 1900 when motor vehicles joined the horses, trams and traction engines pounding its wood-paved surface, increasing road maintenance and improvement costs, including safety measures. Constraints of space limit this paper to main road maintenance. From 1902 Chiswick’s main road funding became precarious, forcing its Urban District Council (UDC) to compensate through increased district rates and borrowing. By 1906 community tension over this posed a threat to its local government, when Chiswick’s Ratepayers Association- backed candidates challenging councillors in four of the district’s six wards.2 It was the most highly- contested poll in over a decade. Ratepayers were not told their high rates and UDC indebtedness were partly due to Middlesex County Council’s (MCC’s) underfunding of their main road and its unfavourable post-1902 reimbursement terms for constituent local authorities. Nor would they learn until 1910 that the county’s parsimony had been the inevitable consequence of economic distortions to Goschen’s novel, post-1888 Assigned Revenues [AR] system.3
1 ‘High Road Chiswick,’ Chiswick Local Studies [CLS]. 2 ‘The Coming Elections,’ The Chiswick Times (TCT), 30 March, 1906, CLS. 3 MCC Chairman’s Report (1910), pp.40-42, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)/MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/1. 1 George (later Viscount) Goschen was Chancellor of the Exchequer when AR was introduced amid wide-ranging reforms to local government, including the creation of administrative counties like the Middlesex and London County Councils.4 As a former President of the Poor Law Board, Goschen was an expert on local government finances and his reforms sought both to separate central from local finances and diversify sources of local authority income away from its near-complete reliance on land and property taxes via the rates.5 Goschen’s reforms abolished Exchequer (government) grants for certain locally-provided services of national importance, as in Figure 2. Instead, county councils would now receive income from locally-purchased excise (local taxation) licences, such as for carriages (later motor vehicles), public houses, guns, game, male servants, armorial bearings, and dogs. A portion of death duties incurred within county borders (a ‘probate duty grant’) added to local government income under AR.6
Figure 2: Government Grants Paid in 1887-8, Royal Commission on Local Taxation (1901).7
While counties initially profited from AR this was short-lived. From 1890 new central government calls upon it started to mount up. In Greater London, for instance, there were increasing deductions from counties’ AR income to meet the Metropolitan Police Pension Fund’s growing deficiency.8 Additionally, the probate duty allocation was frozen at its 1887-1888 national apportionments, which was considered unfair to rapidly-urbanising and increasingly-populous counties (like Middlesex).9 By 1901 the Royal Commission on Local Taxation found that AR was over complex, and inadequately funded ‘National Services’ provided locally, recommending the return of a government main roads grant at twice the pre-1888 value.10 Its reforms did not occur and AR survived until 1929; a perennial source of conflict between local, regional and central government.11 AR was so complex, said a leading contemporary economist, Edwin Cannan, that by 1914 it had ‘confused national and local administrators for more than a quarter of a century.’12 Unsurprisingly,
4 Local Government (England and Wales) Act (1888), [hereafter LGA (1888)], S.1-27. Legislation source throughout: www.justis.com. 5 C Bellamy, Administering Central-Local Relations, 1871-1919 (Manchester: Manchester University Press; 1988), pp.45- 47. 6 H Finer, English Local Government ((London: Methuen & Co. Ltd; 1950), p.458-9. 7 Final Report of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation, Cd.638, [hereafter RCLT] p.6 (London: HMSO; 1901), p.6. 8 Ibid, p.461, under The Police Act (1890), S.19(1 and 4). 9 Finer, English Local Government, p.460. 10 RCLT, p.29. 11 Abolished by Local Government Act (1929), S.85(1). C Bellamy, Administering Central-Local, pp.52 and 60. See also J A Chandler, Explaining Local Government. Local Government in Britain since 1880 (Manchester: Manchester University Press; 2017), p.148. 12 E Cannan, ‘Local Taxation,’ The Economic Journal (24), 94 (Jun., 1914), p.331. 2 few historians tackle it. Christine Bellamy (Administering Central-Local Relations) and Herman Finer (English Local Government) are notable exceptions, but focussed on AR’s high politics and effects at the county level, not considering on smaller authorities.13 To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study of AR’s impact on a district council, and the first considering its effect on highways. Sources employed to understand AR’s impact on MCC finances and its consequent effects on the funding and governance of Chiswick High Road include: MCC Finance and Highway Committee minutes; MCC Chairmen’s triennial reports; and Chiswick UDC’s Finance, General, and Law & Parliamentary Committee minutes. Chiswick’s records are less detailed and complete than the MCC’s. For this reason neither figures for Chiswick’s General District Rate nor its borrowing are plotted here since AR’s contribution cannot be disaggregated from other factors. COVID19-related archive closures have restricted access to MCC accounts, requiring extraction of key data from multiple reliable MCC sources. Where available, matching data from multiple sources was cross-checked. Their inconsistencies were found not to be material.14 LGA (1888) changed how main roads were financed.15 Previously, counties paid half the costs of main roads to highway authorities like Chiswick’s Local Board (later its UDC).16 This was funded through government main road grants, from which Middlesex received £21,751 in 1887-8, and a county road rate.17 When LGA (1888) abolished county road rates and those government grants, its new administrative counties had to rely on AR to ‘wholly’ fund the costs of main road maintenance and improvement.18 Under the Act, existing highway authorities could retain their right to carry out such work, but counties still had to pay ‘towards’ it.19 Most highway authorities in Middlesex asserted this right, as Figure 3 highlights in red among Chiswick and its neighbours.
Figure 3: Map of authority over main roads in Chiswick and other west Middlesex Districts, 1890.20
13 Bellamy, Administering Central-Local, pp.23-78, and H Finer, English Local Government, pp.456-471. E P Hennock, ‘Finance and Politics in Urban Local Government in England, 1835-1900,’ The Historical Journal, VI, 2 (1963), briefly notes education profited from AR, pp.224-5. 14 ‘Middlesex Matters,’ County of Middlesex Independent (CMI), 12 March, 1913, CLS. 15 Main roads defined as former turnpike roads, their county-funding as under Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act (1878), S.13. 16 Ibid. 17 ‘Exchequer Contribution Account,’ MCC Chairman’s Report (1906-1909), p.41, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)/MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/1. 18 LGA (1888), S.11(1), S.13(1) and S.24. 19 LGA (1888), S.11(2). 20 Legend: red - main roads maintained by local authorities; dark grey/yellow - main roads maintained by MCC; blue - roads which might become main roads, The County of Middlesex, 1890, CLSL. 3
AR income reached counties as follows: Commissioners of the Inland Revenue set up a new ‘Local Taxation Account’ in the Bank of England and paid into it all duties collected within counties through post office sales of local taxation licences, and also from probate; the amounts due to each county were then apportioned according to how much was collected by it although, as for the aforementioned Probate Duty Grant, some amounts were capped; after deductions for specific purposes (e.g. police) the Local Government Board (LGB) distributed remaining assigned revenues back to the counties. Upon receipt, counties had to deposit this income into a new, locally-held Exchequer Contribution Account (ECA). This kept AR income separate from the general County Fund until all statutory demands upon it were met. As under Sections 24 and 26 of LGA (1888), contemporary post-1890 accounts for Middlesex show its ECA funded: • Poor Law Union Officers • Teachers in Poor Law Schools • Registrars of Births and Deaths • Union Pauper Lunatics • Medical Officers and Inspectors of Nuisances • Public vaccinators • and Technical Education.21 Under LGA (1888) main roads were omitted from the priority spending list and so reliant, as Finer noted, on ‘any money left over’.22 The RC Local Taxation understood this was ‘for the simplification of accounts’.23 Initially, Middlesex County Council profited from AR but by 1905 it was draining the county fund such that, as shown in Figure 6, county rate increases were needed to meet the ECA’s obligations. These and the MCC’s other costs increased in step, like the rising main road costs shown in Figure 7.24
Figure 6: MCC ECA Balance versus MCC County Rate (1898-1912).25
21 Optional under LTA (1890), S.1(2 and 3). 22 Finer, English Local Government p.461. 23 RCLT, p.29. 24 Excludes main road improvements and MCC payments towards non-main roads and bridges. 25 ECA Credit/Deficit sources: (1898-1902), MCC Finance Mins 15 July, 1903, LMA/MCC/MIN/017/028; (1902-1903), MCC Chairman’s Report (1904), p.37, LMA/ MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/1; (1904-1912), ‘Middlesex Matters,’ CMI, March, 1913. All county rates, MCC Chairman’s Report (1913), p.29. 4
Figure 7: MCC ECA Balance versus Main Road Maintenance Costs (1898-1912).26
According to the pre-eminent early twentieth-century motoring lobbyist William Rees Jeffreys, later Secretary of the Road Board, AR was ‘a bad bargain for the local authorities. It also had evil results upon the standard of highway administration’.27 Chiswick’s UDC certainly found it so, since as traffic upon its High Road increased, its MCC main road reimbursements changed for the worse. In 1902, while attempting to renegotiate its previous ten-year funding agreement with the MCC, Chiswick was told this would no longer be possible. From now on, MCC main road reimbursements would be made annually on the basis of Chiswick’s audited accounts.28 Under their previous agreement, MCC main road reimbursements were sufficiently reliable for Chiswick to sign a ten-year maintenance and repair contract with the Acme Paving and Flooring Company. For a fixed annual charge Acme Co. covered all Chiswick’s main road maintenance costs, including one full re-paving of the High Road.29 Now Chiswick and its ratepayers would have to subsidise the MCC’s annual reimbursements for many months, not knowing as they incurred costs how much the MCC would repay.30 This could increase pressure on the District Rate. In the new MCC scheme’s first year of operation, Chiswick was kept waiting for over a year for full reimbursement of its 1902-3 main road costs. Chiswick estimated these would be £3,500 between 1 April, 1902 and 31 March, 1903.31 While the MCC gave Chiswick an interim payment of £1,200 towards that year’s main road costs, the rest had to wait until after 12 December, 1903 when
26 Ibid, and main road spending calculated or extracted from: (1898-1902), MCC evidence to Royal Commission on London Traffic (London: HMSO; 1905), Cd.2597. Table 1, Appendix No.48; (1903) MCC Chairman’s Report (1901-1904), LMA/MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/1; (1904) missing; (1905) MCC Highways Mins 2 Feb., 1910, p.157, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/042; (1906) missing; (1907-1912) averages calculated from MCC Chairman’s Reports (1910 and 1913), LMA/MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/1 and MCC/CL/CHAIR/2/2. 27 W Rees Jeffreys, The King’s Highway (S.I.; Batchworth Press: 1949), p.7. 28 Chiswick UDC Mins [hereafter CUDC Mins], 11 June, 1902, CLS, and MCC Highways Mins, 3 Dec. 1902, p.215, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/026 29 MCC Highways Mins, 4 July, 1906, p.15, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/035. 30 CUDC Mins, 11 June, 1902, CLS. 31 CUDC Mins, 4 Feb. 1903, p.399, CLS. 5 Chiswick’s audit was completed.32 The chart in Figure 7 shows that the MCC made up the shortfall in 1904, with an allowance of £3,600, though Chiswick demanded only £3,500.33 Thereafter the MCC’s authorised main road spending was always lower than Chiswick’s estimate. When setting its 1907-08 district rate, Chiswick UDC cut its road works budget by almost 19%, overruling the Chairman of its Works Committee who blamed the district’s ‘extraordinary’ number of empty houses on the ‘bad condition’ of its roads.34 Even so, the rate that year was 4s 3d, a pre-War peak.35 The MCC might make its annual road reimbursements not in single lump sums but, according to its Chairman, ‘if the amount is large’ require UDCs to take out loans to cover them.36 The MCC would then repay this by annual instalments of principal and interest.37
Figure 8: Chiswick’s expected main road costs and MCC approved reimbursements (1903-1907).38 A small practical example may illustrate how this, too, could adversely affect main road reimbursements. It concerns the widening of a portion of Chiswick High Road’s footway in February 1904 (pale paving to the right in Figure 1).39 The MCC’s Surveyor approved a spend of £542 on patent stone for the 500yd (480m) stretch, allowing Chiswick to take out a loan at 3.25% interest per annum for the purpose.40 The work actually cost £1,101 18s 1d to complete to the Surveyor’s satisfaction,
32 MCC Highways Mins, 3 December 1902, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/026, p.215, and Chiswick UDC Minutes - Finance Committee, Apr 1902 - Mar 1907 [hereafter CUDC Fin Mins], p.497, CLS. 33 CUDC Mins, 11 June, 02, p.95, CLS. 34 ‘Chiswick District Council Works Committee. Estimating the Rate,’ TCT, 8 March, 1907. 35 Ibid. 36 MCC Chairman’s Report (1904), p.37. 37 Ibid. 38 Chiswick figure for 1904 is currently estimated. CUDC Fin Mins: 11 June, 1902 (estimate for 1903); 26 February, 1904; 10 March, 1905; 5 March 1906, CUDC Mins Mar - Apr, 1902-1903 to Mar - Apr 1906, CLS. 39 Main Road footways and crossings were ruled part of the main road in 1890, in Local Board Warminster and Wiltshire County Council, [1890] 25 Q.B.D. 450
41 ‘Chiswick Urban District Council… footpaths’ MCC Highways Mins, 16 March, 1904, p.57, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/030. MCC paid half the cost of main road footways. 42 Ibid. 43 ‘A Fiscal Policy for the Council’, TCT, 5 January, 1906. 44 Ibid. 45 Hennock, Finance and Politics … 1835-1900,’ p.217. 46 ‘Chiswick Urban District Council Deductions …,’ 26 July, 1909, MCC Highways Mins, 6 October, 1909, p.177, LMA/MCC/MIN/20/041. 47 Chiswick Urban District Council Act (1911) [hereafter Chiswick UDC Act (1911), Works 1-10, S.5 and S.170(1)(a). 48 Ibid. 49 Under LGA (1929), S.29(1). 50 County Councils Association, Signed Executive Minutes, 1908-1912, Cadbury Research Library (hereafter CRL)/CCA/A/2/2, and Urban District Councils Association, Official Circular, Vol. XX (1909), CRL/UDCA/A/18, University of Birmingham. 7