ABSTRACT
An opportunity to review the structure of water management in Scotland was provided in 1966 by the Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland, chaired by the Rt. Hon. Lord Wheatley and appointed just four months after SWAC had published its final proposals for regional water boards and a year before the enabling Water (Scotland) Act passed into law. Water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment were not, of course, the main concerns of the Commission, but they were functions of local government, and, as such, were to be considered in a broader perspective of policy planning, structure planning and strategic planning, along with transport, housing and education. The Commission's inquiry, which (like all such inquiries) provided published statements of views by a wide variety of bodies, public and professional, was also an opportunity to reconsider the place of river purification generally, which had been removed from local government in 1951 with the formation of the River Purification Boards.
