2. c. 55) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom affecting local government in England and Wales outside London.

Two local government commissions, one for England and one for Wales, were to be established to carry out reviews under these guidelines.

[1] The Association of Municipal Authorities, which represented 432 boroughs in England and Wales gave its considered response to the paper in December.

The document proposed giving additional powers to larger non-county boroughs and urban districts.

Such towns, if they had a population of 60,000 would be entitled to assume responsibility for a number of county-level functions among which were education, welfare and health services, libraries, classified roads, bridges, licensing of cinemas and theatres if they so wished.

James MacColl, the Labour MP for Widnes, introduced an unsuccessful amendment for the establishment of a local income tax.

Outside of Parliament, the Cinque Ports voiced their opposition to the Bill, in particular the amalgamation or reduction in status of smaller boroughs in the confederation.

They sought a change in the rating formula, so that resort towns would be reckoned as having fifty per cent more than their resident winter population.

The commission requested in 1963 that the Merseyside and Selnec special review areas be extended such that they touched in the middle, thus including Warrington, St Helens and Wigan.

Although no local government reforms were made under the 1958 Act, a SELNEC passenger transport authority was formed in 1969.

A metropolitan county of Greater Manchester was formed in 1974 for a similar area to the SRA, although it excluded Alderley Edge, Disley and Wilmslow, and added Wigan.

In 1966, an order altering local government in much of the "Black Country" part of the SRA came into effect creating five large county boroughs of Dudley, Walsall, Warley, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, which were also to share a police force, the West Midlands Constabulary.

The 1958 Act did not extend to the Greater London Conurbation (as defined by the Registrar General) where reform of local government was under consideration by the Royal Commission under Sir Edwin Herbert established in the previous year.

This was addressed in the 1958 Act, which gave the reviewing county council or local government commission the power to include a non-county borough in a rural district.

The concept of rural boroughs had originally been announced by Henry Brooke, Minister of Housing and Local Government in the House of Commons on 29 July 1957 when he said he was considering that in future rural districts could include "what might be called a rural borough or country borough with the mayoralty and corporate existence continuing so that the burgesses could go on enjoying the traditions and the corporate property which their predecessors had handed down".