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Local Government

The question of broad support is a judgment that we made on the evidence submitted to us. Originally, for each of the 16 proposals—some of which we did not believe met the criteria—the question was not whether there was a majority of this or that set of views in favour or not. The purpose of the criterion was to allow us to come to a judgment about whether we could be reasonably confident that, should the proposal go ahead, there would be sufficiently broad support for it to be successful. That was the essence of the criterion of broad support—and, indeed, of the other criteria.