 An area the Reform Act did not address was the issue of municipal and regional government . As a result of archaic traditions , many English counties had enclaves and exclaves , which were mostly abolished in the Counties ( Detached Parts ) Act 1844 . Furthermore , many new conurbations and economic areas bridged traditional county boundaries by having been formed in previously obscure areas : the West Midlands conurbation bridged Staffordshire , Warwickshire and Worcestershire , Manchester and Liverpool both had hinterlands in Cheshire but city centres in Lancashire , while in the south Oxford 's developing southern suburbs were in Berkshire and London was expanding into Essex , Surrey and Middlesex . This led to further acts to reorganise county boundaries in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries . 
