ABSTRACT
The government's dominant perspective on local government has been an economic one, premised on its perceived need to control the total level of public expenditure, a view open to challenge, if one distinguishes between the level of central-government grant and the finance raised by local authorities themselves through council tax and charges. The growing intensity of the financial crisis facing local authorities that had become apparent by the end of 2016, particularly in the larger cities, was made clear by Birmingham's chief executive Mark Rogers in an interview in The Guardian. The Combined Authorities initiative, despite its transfer of selected responsibilities from the centre to selected collectives of local authorities, is no substitute for a comprehensive reassessment of central–local relations and in particular government structure. Local authorities should be entitled to adequate financial resources of their own, commensurate with the responsibilities allocated to them, which they should be able to dispose of freely, within the framework of their statutory powers.
