ABSTRACT
There are two dominant but seemingly contradictory narratives about the state of
English local government. Both these stories can be heard in council chambers and town
halls, in Westminster and Whitehall, and in the media and academia. On the one hand, we
have the story of ‘local government transformed’ which catalogues the arrival of the ‘new
public management’ and, more recently, new political structures inside local authorities, in
a context characterised by new roles for non-elected bodies, commercial and voluntary
sector contractors and multi-agency partnerships. On the other hand, there is the story of
‘local government unmoved’, which holds that despite several hundred pieces of legislation local authorities still look very much like they did in 1979: a collection of professionally driven service departments and a form of politics still dominated by
committee conventions, the party group and the whip.
