A royal commission, with Lord Bledisloe acting as its chairman, reported on the state of land drainage legislation covering England and Wales on 5 December 1927.
[1] It concluded that existing laws were "vague and ill-defined, full of anomalies, obscure, lacking in uniformity, and even chaotic.
"[2] It recommended the creation of catchment boards with responsibility for main rivers, and formed the basis for the Land Drainage Act 1930, although only 47 of the 100 catchment boards suggested by the commission were enshrined in the legislation.
[5] River authorities were created by the Water Resources Act 1963 (1963 C. 38), which became law on 31 July 1963.
[7] The areas of the authorities were in most cases defined by reference to maps held by the river boards they replaced.