Chris Game

Local Government in the United Kingdom

PART 1: LOCAL GOVERNMENT: THE BASICS - Introduction - Our Aims and Approach - Themes and Issues in Local Government - Why Elected Local Government? - The Development of Local Government - Current Structures - Changing Functions: From Government to Governance - Central-Local Government Relations - The National Local Government System - Finance - The Nuts and Bolts - Finance - The Recent Story - PART 2: THE POLITICS AND PEOPLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT - Local Elections - Councillors - The Voice of Choice - The Local Government Workforce - Political Parties - Who Makes Policy? - Local Pressure Groups: The Exercise of Influence - PART 3: AN AGENDA OF CHANGE - Developments in Internal Management -

Comprehensive performance assessment in English local government

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide, at a particularly significant point in its short history, an overview of a unique system of performance management to which all principal local authorities in England have been subject for the past three years.Design/methodology/approach – Comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) is the controversial centrepiece of a system of performance measurement and improvement management that has involved the external classification of each individual local authority as Excellent, Good, Fair, Weak or Poor. It is a system that, as comparative data on the scale of local government demonstrate, could only be attempted in the UK. The article is written as a non‐technical and evaluative narrative of the introduction, early operation and impact of this system, concluding with the changes in methodology introduced to counter the phenomenon of too many of the nations local authorities becoming officially too good for the existing measurement framework.Findings – Key poin...

The Impact of Compulsory Competitive Tendering

Of all the changes introduced by the 1979–97 Conservative Governments, perhaps the most fundamental and far-reaching were those associated with compulsory competitive tendering (CCT). Successive legislative enactments forced local authorities to put specified services out to competitive tender on terms and time-scales established by the centre. In many cases, as we shall see, the tenders were won not by private companies but by in-house bids from a council’s own workforce. But the very acts of putting together a tender document and drawing up and monitoring contracts produce profound changes in the internal management and operation of an authority — sufficiently profound in our view for CCT to justify a chapter in its own right.

Political Parties and Local Democracy

The period immediately following local government reorganisation in 1974 saw, particularly in more rural areas, a marked acceleration of the party politicisation of local government. One major cause of this development was the structural reorganisation itself: the boundary changes and the amalgamation of small and independent-dominated authorities into larger and more overtly partisan ones. An additional cause was the incorporation of formerly ‘independent’ councillors, associated with, and even members of, the Conservative Party into the Conservative mainstream as a result of explicit pressure being placed upon them to stand in future as officially adopted Conservative candidates, or risk facing the opposition of such candidates. As a result, in the years since reorganisation, the number of ‘non-partisan’ councils and independent councillors has continued to fall, although the latter are still in a majority in nearly one council in ten, and retain a significant presence on at least the same number again.

Central-Local Government Relations

This chapter explores the complex area of intergovernmental or central-local relations. It begins by providing an overview of the formal framework within which interactions take place and some of the instruments of central control available to Ministers individually and collectively. Formal frameworks must, however, always be studied alongside actual working relationships — hence the dynamics of central-local relations come under scrutiny next. The third part of the chapter highlights the important role of the newly expanded Department of the Environment Transport and the Regions (DoETR) and the recently created Integrated Regional Offices (IROs). Attention then focuses upon a major House of Lords report on central-local relations published in 1996. Finally a number of theoretical perspectives are considered.

The underwhelming demand for poll tax

As the poll tax has entered the centre of the political arena, public opinion has changed to the extent that it is now fair to say ‘the more they know about it, the less they like it’. There is a high political cost to pay for a policy change which has more losers than gainers.

‘Unprecedented in Local Government Terms’– The Local Government Commission’s Public Consultation Programme

The purpose of this article is to describe and evaluate the public consultation exercises mounted by the Local Government Commission for England under its successive Chairmen, Sir John Banham and Sir David Cooksey. The Commission was evidently proud of this aspect of its work, emphasizing repeatedly its unprecedented nature: in itself an unremarkable claim in the context of British local government structural reviews. This article suggests that, in terms of quality and value for money, as opposed to sheer scale, the consultation programme - and particularly the three principal tranches of MORI residential surveys - was less laudable. The article examines each of these surveys: the stage one community identity polls, which might have contributed to the government’s intended ‘community index’, had the latter not previously been rejected by the Commission; the stage three option consultation surveys, the Banham Commission’s instrument for the hybridization of English local government, which prompted accusations of policymaking by opinion poll; and the stage three ‘re-review’ surveys for the Cooksey Commission, which had already indicated its disinclination to accord local public opinion any special weighting in its deliberations. The article attempts to summarize, in two key tables, both the results and the impact of the Commission’s public consultations, and in doing so to trace the progress of the review from an initially proposed 99 new unitary authorities, down to 50, then 38, and back up to the final total of 46.

Stephen Coleman, How Voters Feel

as we do? If not, are our troubles a reflection of democracy growing old, are we taking it for granted, are our expectations higher? etc. I certainly miss this opportunity to create a contrast. Also, I find the conclusion a bit disappointing, not living up to the expectations created by the high quality of the book. The fact that the representative model still is the core of local democracy is treated somewhat superficially. In my mind this seems indeed an important fact. I would have liked to see a more in-depth discussion of questions like: If representation still is the core, is that good for local democracy, is it a necessary condition for democracy or could we do without?

Local Elections in Britain

I’m a psephophile. No, not a psephologist, although the derivation is similarly from the pebble (psëphos) which the Athenians dropped into an urn to vote. The ‘ology’ is the problem. As Maureen Lipman’s Beattie from the BT adverts insisted, ‘you get an ology, you’re a scientist!’ Exactly: psephology was and has increasingly become a science – in this instance, the statistical analysis of voting trends. That’s not really my thing. Like Peter Cook’s character who had insufficient Latin to get through the rigorous judging exams, I don’t really have the statistics for the rigorous modern-day electoral analysis. I can try to follow, but not seriously contribute; so, no psephologist. I do, though, love elections and everything about them – from electoral systems to the allegations of personation, but, perhaps most of all, the perusal of the actual results, before they’re all aggregated and anonymised into ‘data’. In short, I’m a psephophile, an election anorak. In fact, worse: I’m a local psephophile. All anoraks, of course, need their bibles. The plane-spotters arrested in Greece surely had about their persons their Jane’s Aircraft Recognition Guides. Trainspotters, or rail enthusiasts as they probably prefer, have their NREA Spotter’s Companions. And psephophiles have, or certainly should have, their ‘Rallings and Thrashers’ – or, more specifically, the second edition of the Statistical Digest, edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, founders nearly 20 years ago of the remarkable Plymouth University cottage industry that is today the Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre. It will be referred to hereinafter as the Digest, to distinguish it from the editors’ equally valuable Local Elections Handbooks, published annually

Local elections in Britain

by Colin Railings and Michael Thrasher (London, Routledge, 1997) xii+232 pp., £45 hbk ISBN 0 415 05953 4