John B wrote:

The issue was having the administration moving from Lewes to Chichester.
In
1974 EG was on the major route from London to Lewes (the A22 out of EG
to
the south is called Lewes Road) so there were/are quite close links
between
the two towns. Meanwhile, Chichester is a about as far away from EG as
you
can get and still be in Sussex. Getting from one to the other is a major
trek so there's no feeling that they belong together in any way.

There's some logic there - however, given that Crawley, Horsham,
Worthing and Gatwick are in W Sussex, the issue is more that
Chichester (right on the western border) is a daft place to put the
administration for a region whose population is concentrated in its
east.

Not as daft as putting Surrey County Council in London, admittedly...

Less daft as it was in Surrey when it was put there; rather the boundaries
moved away. They *should* have relocated the seat of administration but
often these things stir up local rivalries and a neutral location is often
chosen or retained in preference to the logical one. Note that the last
proposal for a move was to Woking rather than Guildford. Personally as one
who grew up in Epsom I'd see Esher or Leatherhead as the natural place to go
rather than being too far to the west.

Furthermore AIUI prior to the 1970s shake-up a lot of county councils met in
county halls located in county boroughs that were outside their
jurisdiction - e.g. Cumberland in Carlisle, Devon in Exeter, Lincolnshire in
Lincoln, Norfolk in Norwich and so forth. So the Surrey situation was not
unique in 1965 and by the time it became so things had settled down.