The pattern of
local government in England is
complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to
the local arrangements.
Legislation concerning local government in
England
is decided by the Parliament
and Government
of the United Kingdom, because England does not have a devolved
parliament.
Subdivisions
Structure of local government in
England
Principal authorities
England is subdivided into nine
regions.
One of these, London
, has an
elected Assembly and Mayor, but the others have a relatively
minor role, with unelected regional assemblies
and Regional Development
Agencies. Below the region level and excluding London,
England has two different patterns of local government in use. In
some areas there is a
county council
responsible for services such as education, waste management and
strategic planning within a
county,
with several
district
councils responsible for services such as housing, waste collection
and local planning. These councils are elected in separate
elections. Some areas have only one level of local government, and
these are dubbed
unitary
authorities.
The City of London
and the Isles of Scilly
are sui generis authorities, predating recent
reforms of local government.
The following table lists the principal authorities found in
England. These are two-tier 'shire' counties, metropolitan
districts, London boroughs and unitary authorities:
Parishes
Below the district level, a district may be divided into several
civil parishes. Typical activities undertaken by a parish council
include
allotment, parks,
public clocks, and entering
Britain in
Bloom. They also have a consultative role in planning. Councils
such as districts, counties and unitaries are known as
principal local authorities in order to
differentiate them in their legal status from parish and town
councils, which are not uniform in their existence. Local councils
tend not to exist in metropolitan areas but there is nothing to
stop their establishment.
For example, Birmingham
has a parish, New Frankley
. Parishes have not existed in Greater London since 1965, but from 2007 they could legally be
created. In some districts, the rural area is
parished and the urban is not - such as in the borough of
Shrewsbury
and Atcham
, where the town of Shrewsbury is unparished and has
no local councils, while the countryside around the town is
parished. In others, there is a more complex mixture,
as in the case of Crewe and Nantwich
, where Nantwich
is parished, Crewe
is not, and
many parishes share a parish council with neighbouring
parishes.
History
The current arrangement of local government in England is the
result of a range of incremental measures which have their origins
in the municipal reform of the 19th century. During the 20th
century, the structure of local government was reformed and
rationalised, with local government areas becoming fewer and
larger; and the functions of local councils amended. The way local
authorities are funded has also been subject to periodic and
significant reform.
People
Councillors and mayors
Councils have historically had no split between
executive and
legislature. Functions are vested in the council
itself, and then exercised usually by committees or subcommittees
of the council. The post of leader was recognised, and leaders
typically chair several important committees, but had no special
authority. The chair of the council itself is an honorary position
with no real power. Under section 15 the
Local Government and
Housing Act 1989, committees must roughly reflect the
political party makeup of the council;
before it was permitted for a party with control of the council to
"pack" committees with their own members. This pattern was based on
that established for
municipal
boroughs by the
Municipal Corporations Act
1835, and then later adopted for
county councils and
rural districts.
In 2000, Parliament passed the
Local Government Act 2000 to
require councils to move to an executive-based system, either with
the
council leader and a
cabinet acting as an executive authority, or with a
directly elected mayor –
either with a mayor and cabinet drawn from the councillors –
or a mayor and
council manager.
There is a small exception to this whereby smaller district
councils (population of less than 85,000) can adopt a modified
committee system.
Most councils are using the council leader
and cabinet option, while 52 smaller councils have been allowed to
propose alternative arrangements based on the older system (Section
31 of the Act), and Brighton and Hove
invoked a similar provision (Section 27(2)(b)) when
a referendum to move to a directly elected mayor was
defeated.
There are now twelve directly elected mayors, in districts where a
referendum was in
favour of them.
Many of the mayors are independents (notably
in Hartlepool
and Middlesbrough
, which in parliamentary elections are usually Labour Party strongholds).
Since May
2002, only a handful of referendums have been held, and they have
all been negative apart from Torbay
. Of the mayors, all but Stoke-on-Trent
's are mayor and
cabinet-based. The Executive, in whichever form, is held
to account by the remainder of the Councillors acting as the
"
Overview and Scrutiny
function" - calling the Executive to account for their actions
and to justify their future plans. As a relatively new concept
within local government, this is arguably an under-developed part
of local municipal administration. In a related development, the
Health and Social Care
Act 2001,
Police and
Justice Act 2006, and 2006 local government white paper set out
a role for local government Overview and Scrutiny in creating
greater local accountability for a range of public-sector
organisations.
Boroughs in many cases are descendants of
municipal boroughs set up hundreds of years ago, and so have
accreted a number of traditions and ceremonial functions. Where
borough councils have not adopted a directly elected mayor, the
chair of the council is the
mayor. In certain cities the
mayor is known as the
Lord Mayor. The
chairman of a town council is styled the Town Mayor.
Councils may make people honorary
freemen or honorary
aldermen.
Elections
The area which a council covers is divided into one or more
electoral divisions – known
in district and parish councils as "
wards", and in county councils as "electoral
divisions". Each ward can return one or more members; multi-member
wards are quite common. There is no requirement for the size of
wards to be the same within a district, so one ward can return one
member and another ward can return two. Metropolitan borough wards
must return a multiple of three councillors, while until the
Local Government Act 2003
multiple-member county electoral divisions were forbidden.
In the election, the candidates to receive the most votes win, in a
system known as the
multi-member plurality system.
There is no element of
proportional representation, so
if four candidates from the Mauve Party poll 2,000 votes each, and
four candidates from the Taupe Party poll 1,750 votes each, all
four Mauve candidates will be returned, and no Taupe candidates
will. Although this has been said by some to be undemocratic, minor
and local
single-issue parties
do tend to do much better at local elections than they do in
general elections, so the case for reform is perhaps less clear. In
any event, the system is not likely to change for the foreseeable
future.
The term of a councillor is usually four years. Councils may be
elected wholly, every four years, or "by thirds", where a third of
the councillors get elected each year, with one year with no
elections. Recently, the "by halves" system, whereby half of the
council is elected every two years, has been allowed. Sometimes
wholesale boundary revisions will mean the entire council will be
re-elected, before returning to the previous elections by thirds or
by halves over the coming years.
Officers
Councillors cannot do the work of the council themselves, and so
are responsible for appointment and oversight of officers, who are
delegated to perform most tasks. Local authorities nowadays have to
appoint a "Chief Executive Officer", with overall responsibility
for council employees, and who operates in conjunction with
department heads. The Chief Executive Officer position is weak
compared to the
council manager
system seen in other countries (and in Stoke). In some areas, much
of the work previously undertaken directly by council employees has
been
privatised.
Functions and powers
| Arrangement |
Upper tier authority |
Lower tier authority |
| Shire counties |
waste management, education, libraries, social services,
transport, strategic planning, consumer protection |
housing, waste collection, council tax collection, local
planning, licensing, cemeteries and crematoria |
Unitary
authorities |
housing, waste management, waste collection,
council tax collection, education, libraries, social services,
transport, planning, consumer protection, licensing, cemeteries and
crematoria † |
| Metropolitan counties |
|
housing, waste collection, council tax collection, education,
libraries, social services, transport, planning, consumer
protection, licensing, cemeteries and crematoria † |
| Greater London |
transport, strategic planning, regional development, police,
fire |
housing, waste collection, council tax collection, education,
libraries, social services, local planning, consumer protection,
licensing, cemeteries and crematoria † |
† =
in practice, some functions take place at a strategic level
through joint boards and arrangements
Councils also have a general power to "promote economic, social and
environmental well-being" of their area. However, like all public
bodies, they are limited by the doctrine of
ultra vires, and may only do things that
common law or an
Act of Parliament
specifically or generally allows for - in contrast to the
earlier incorporated
municipal
corporations which were treated as natural persons and could
undertake whatever activities they wished to. Councils may promote
Local
Act in Parliament to grant them special powers.
For example, Kingston
upon Hull
had for many years a municipally owned telephone
company, Kingston
Communications.
Funding
Local councils are funded by a combination of
central government grants,
Council Tax (a locally set
tax based on house value),
Business Rates, and fees and charges from
certain services including
decriminalised parking
enforcement. The proportion of revenue that comes from Council
Tax is low, meaning that if a council wishes to increase its
funding modestly, it has to put up Council Tax by a large amount.
Central government retains the right to "cap" Council Tax if it
deems it to be too much. This is an area of debate in British
politics at the moment, with councils and central government
blaming each other for council tax rises.
Council Tax is collected by the district-level council. Authorities
such as the
GLA, parish
councils, county councils, passenger transport authorities, fire
authorities,
police authorities,
and national parks authorities can make a
precept. This shows up as an independent element on
council tax bills, but is collected by the district and funnelled
to the precepting authority. Some joint ventures are instead funded
by
levy.
Boundaries and names
Chester district shown within
Cheshire
Sizes of council areas vary widely.
The most populous district in England is
Birmingham (a metropolitan
borough) with 977,087 people (2001 census), and the least
populous non-metropolitan unitary area is Rutland
with 34,563. However, these are outliers,
and most English unitary authorities have a population in the range
of 150,000 to 300,000.
The smallest non-unitary district in England
is West Somerset at 35,400 people, and
the largest Northampton
at 194,458. However, all but 9 non-unitary
English districts have fewer than 150,000 people. Responsibility
for minor revisions to local government areas falls to the
Boundary Committee for
England. Revisions are usually undertaken to avoid borders
straddling new development, to bring them back into line with a
diverted
watercourse, or to align them
with roads or other features.
Where a district is coterminous with a town, the name is an easy
choice to make. In some cases, a district is named after its main
town, despite there being other towns in the district.
Confusingly, such
districts sometimes have city status, and so for
example the City of
Canterbury
contains several towns apart from Canterbury
, which have distinct identities.
Similarly
Chester contains a number of
large villages and extensive countryside, which is quite distinct
from the main settlement of Chester
. They can be named after traditional
subdivisions (Spelthorne), rivers
(Eden
, Arun
), a
modified version of their main town's name (Harborough
, Wycombe
), or after a geographical feature in the
district (Cotswold
, Cannock Chase
). Purely geographical names can also be used
(South
Bucks
, Suffolk Coastal
, North West Leicestershire
). Councils have a general power to
change the name of the district, and consequently their own name,
under section 74 of the
Local
Government Act 1972. Such a resolution must have two thirds of
the votes at a meeting convened for the purpose.
Councils of counties are called "X County Council", whereas
district councils can be District Council, Borough Council, or City
Council depending upon the status of the district. Unitary
authorities may be called County Councils, Borough Councils, City
Councils, District Councils, or sometimes just Councils. These
names do not change the role or authority of the council.
Greater
London is further divided into 32 London
boroughs, each governed by a London Borough Council, and the
City of
London, which is governed by the City of London
Corporation. In the London boroughs the legal entity is
not the Council as elsewhere but the inhabitants incorporated as a
legal entity by
royal charter (a
process abolished elsewhere in England and Wales under the Local
Government Act 1972). Thus, a London authority's official legal
title is "The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of X" (or
"The Lord Mayor and Citizens of the City of Westminster"). In
common speech, however, "The London Borough of X" is used.
Metropolitan counties have no county councils and are divided into
metropolitan districts whose councils have either the status of
City Council or Metropolitan Borough Council.
Some districts are
Royal boroughs, but
this does not affect the name of the council.
Special arrangements
Joint arrangements
West Mercia Police shown within
England
Local authorities sometimes provide services on a joint basis with
other authorities, through bodies known as joint-boards.
Joint-boards are not directly elected but are made up of
councillors appointed from the authorities which are covered by the
service. Typically, joint-boards are created to avoid splitting up
certain services when
unitary
authorities are created, or a county or regional council is
abolished. In other cases, if several authorities are considered
too small (in terms of either geographic size or population) to run
a service effectively by themselves, joint-boards are established.
Typical services run by joint-boards include
policing,
fire services,
public transport and sometimes
waste disposal authorities.
If a
county is too small to justify its own police force, a joint police
force is used which covers several counties; for example, the
West Mercia Constabulary
covers Shropshire
, Telford and
Wrekin, Herefordshire
and Worcestershire. In the six
metropolitan counties, the
metropolitan borough councils also
appoint members to joint county-wide
Passenger Transport
Authorities to oversee
public
transport, and joint waste disposal authorities, which were
created after the county councils were abolished.
Joint-boards were used extensively in
Greater
London when the Greater
London Council was abolished, to avoid splitting up some
London-wide services. These functions have now been taken
over by the
Greater London
Authority. Similar arrangements exist in
Berkshire, where the county council has been
abolished. If a joint body is legally required to exist, it is
known as a
joint-board. However, local authorities
sometimes create joint bodies voluntarily and these are known as
joint-committees.
City of London Corporation
The
City of
London covers a square mile (2.6 km²) in the heart of
London
. It is governed by the
City of London Corporation, which
has a unique structure. The Corporation has been broadly untouched
by local government reforms and democratisation. The
business vote was abolished for other parts of
the country in 1969, but due to the low resident population of the
City this was thought impractical. In fact, the business vote was
recently extended in the City to cover more companies.
Future
The Government released a Local Government White Paper on
26 October 2006,
Strong and Prosperous Communities,
which deals with the structure of local government. The White Paper
does not deal with the issues of local government funding or of
reform or replacement of the
Council
Tax, which is awaiting the final report of the
Lyons Review. A Local Government Bill has been
introduced in the 2006–2007 session of Parliament. The White Paper
emphasises the concept of "double devolution", with more powers
being granted to councils, and powers being devolved from town
halls to community levels. It proposes to reduce the level of
central government oversight over local authorities by removing
centrally set performance targets, and statutory controls of the
Secretary of State over parish councils, bye-laws, and electoral
arrangements.
The white
paper proposed that the existing prohibition on parish council in Greater London will be abolished, and making new parishes easier
to set up. Parish councils can currently be styled parish
councils, town councils or city councils: the White Paper proposes
that "community council", "neighbourhood council" and "village
council" may be used as well. The White Paper proposes to
strengthen the council executives, and provides an option between a
directly elected mayor, a directly-elected executive, or an
indirectly elected leader – all with a fixed 4-year term. It
promises that the Department for Transport will put forward
proposals for a reform of the
Passenger Transport
Authorities. The white paper allows for
structural
changes to local government in England and consensus-based
proposals for unitary authority status, were asked to be submitted
before 25 January 2007.
A report
released by the IPPR's Centre for
Cities in February 2006, City Leadership: giving city regions
the power to grow, proposed the creation of two large
city-regions based on Manchester
and Birmingham: the Birmingham one would cover the existing
West Midlands metropolitan
county, along with Bromsgrove
, Cannock Chase, Lichfield
, North Warwickshire
, Redditch and Tamworth
, while the Manchester one would cover the
existing Greater
Manchester
along with the borough of
Macclesfield
. No firm proposals of this sort appear
in the White Paper. Reportedly, this had been the subject of an
internal dispute within the government.
See also
References
- Toynbee, P., This vogue for localism has not solved voter
antipathy, The Guardian, (2007)
- Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The working of joint arrangements, Local
and Central Government Relations Research 37, (1995).
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