Peter Watt

Principles and Theories of Local Government

The role of local government is viewed in the context of the overall role of government per se. A particular advantage of local government lies in its ability to arrange for the provision of local public goods in line with local tastes and preferences. A number of arguments suggest that local governments should be assigned adequate powers of local taxation to finance their expenditure responsibilities rather than having to rely on central government grant.

Information, Cooperation and Trust in Strategic Service Delivery Partnerships

Strategic service-delivery partnerships (SSPs) are a new method of contracting for the delivery of local government services. They are rapidly becoming an important feature of local government in Britain. Negotiating and operating such partnerships successfully is a difficult challenge. They require the development and maintenance of a strongly cooperative relationship between the local authority and the strategic partner. This does not always work and there are examples where SSPs have been terminated. This article analyses SSPs in a transactions cost framework and identifies the contracting problems that can work against the success of SSPs and possible solutions to these problems provided by the development of trust. The likelihood of cooperation being based on trust can be signalled by the gifts both sides make during the procurement process in the form of negotiations, factfinding and preparation of the bid. However, procurement regulations may work to discourage a local authority from attaching a sufficiently high weighting to a factor as intangible as trust in the procurement decision.

Budgetary Models, Motivation and Engagement in Financial Collaborations

Abstract This article focuses on the financial aspects of collaborative working between public authorities and other private and voluntary sector organizations. Drawing on research on five English case studies involving local authorities, it considers the extent to which decisions to collaborate and modes of working together are shaped and mediated by financial considerations. In particular, the research highlights differences in ‘budgetary form’ (pooled or aligned), individual partner ‘motivation’ (selfless/altruistic or self-interested) and ‘level of engagement’ (active commitment or passive involvement) as key variables that help to understand how and why some financial collaborations are more successful than others.

Feasible Changes in the UK Controls on Local Government Expenditure

Local government finance has recently been the subject of a review, three consultation papers, a White Paper and major reports from both the House of Lords and House of Commons. This article examines current and feasible changes to the system of local government finance with particular reference to the effects they have on marginal and average accountability. Council tax capping, council tax benefit subsidy limitation, business rates and capital expenditure are among the topics discussed.

Measuring the Fiscal Pressure on English Local Authorities under the Block Grant System

It is widely accepted that local authorities in England have been placed under increasing fiscal pressure during the 1980s by the block grant system combined with the rising level of grant penalties. Controversy surrounds the question of which local authorities have been worst treated by the new system. In this paper it is shown how the measurement of relative fiscal pressure has become much more complex than under the previous grant system, and published results on a suggested measure of fiscal pressure between 1980/81 and 1984/85 are presented.

Privatisation versus poll tax: a public choice analysis of the popularity of two Thatcher 'flagships'

Two major policy innovations of the Thatcher governments are analysed—privatisation and poll tax. A public choice analysis is used to predict and explain why poll tax will be a less popular policy electorally than privatisation. The explanation focuses on the distribution of gains and losses between gainers and losers under the two policies. Two implications of the analysis are that future privatisation issues are likely to continue to be underpriced and that increased central grants will be used to reduce the average level of poll tax.