 Also shown are the wards into which each local government district was divided.In the 1972 local government Act it stated "It shall be taken that each ward shall return one member to the council of the district in which it is situated", however by the time the first elections were held on 30 May 1973, a system of proportional representation using multi-member district electoral areas had been introduced.The electoral areas consisted of groupings of between four and eight wards, with a number of councillors being elected for each area equal to the number of wards.