ABSTRACT
Local government in Britain has always operated in a constitutional vacuum. This chapter explores these two inter-related issues in depth, and develops proposals for change that would strengthen local government's constitutional position, and provides a better basis for deciding how responsibilities should be allocated between centre and locality, and how any changes therein should be managed. It draws attention to the fact that central-government departments other than the DCLG had virtually ignored the implications of the government's localism agenda for the services for which they were responsible. There is the issue of the legitimacy of the centre requiring local authorities to put a range of services out to competitive tender. Local authorities should have sufficient legislative powers to give meaning to devolution, in their governmental role. The statutory, quasi-constitutional, safeguarding of local authorities needs to be underpinned by some form of legal safeguarding, which protects them from any perceived breach of their statutory rights emanating from the centre.
