ONS code 13UC Date dissolved March 31, 2009 | Status Non-metropolitan district | |
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Congleton was, from 1974 to 2009, a local government district with borough status in Cheshire, England. It included the towns of Congleton, Alsager, Holmes Chapel, Middlewich and Sandbach. The headquarters of the borough council were located in Sandbach.
Contents
Creation
The borough was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972 by the merger of the former borough of Congleton, the urban districts of Alsager, Middlewich and Sandbach, and the Congleton Rural District.
Civil Parishes
Congleton was divided into 23 civil parishes and included no unparished areas. Of the 23 civil parishes, four were administered at this level of local government by town councils: Alsager, Middlewich, Sandbach, and Congleton; with the remainder having parish councils. There are two pairs of civil parishes that are grouped together so that they share a parish council. These are Hulme Walfield and Somerford Booths, whose single parish council is called "Hulme Walfield and Somerford Booths Parish Council", and Newbold Astbury and Moreton cum Alcumlow, whose single parish council is called "Newbold Astbury-cum-Moreton Parish Council".
The following civil parishes were included in the borough:
Demographics
The resident population of the borough, as measured in the 2001 Census, was 90,655, of which 49 per cent were male and 51 per cent were female.
Religion
The percentage of people of each religion in the borough (trom the Census 2001):
Elections and political control
Congleton was divided into 20 borough wards which elected a total of 48 councillors to the borough council. The following tables provide the names of these wards and show the composition of the council by political party at 31 March 2009.
The office of mayor was filled by one of the councillors after a ballot amongst all the councillors, and the last holder of the position was a member of the Liberal Democrat party.
Abolition
In 2006 the Department for Communities and Local Government considered reorganising Cheshire's administrative structure as part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England. The decision to merge the boroughs of Congleton, Macclesfield, and Crewe and Nantwich to create a single unitary authority was announced on 25 July 2007, following a consultation period in which a proposal to create a single Cheshire unitary authority was rejected.
The Borough of Congleton was abolished on 1 April 2009, when the new Cheshire East unitary authority was formed.