ABSTRACT
The idea of autonomy has been of great importance in the rhetoric of central-local relations in Great Britain and within the general idea of autonomy, financial autonomy has had pride of place — reflecting the key role of finance in the determination of intergovernmental relationships in any political system. The recurrent use of the term has not, however, contributed to any great precision in its meaning. Clearly it has something to do with the freedom of local authorities, singly or collectively, to make financial decisions in a way which is not wholly dictated to them by central government. They are able, within limits, to determine total levels of revenue raising and expenditure and to allocate expenditure within those totals. But there is no precise yardstick on which a scale of financial autonomy can be measured. Such a yardstick tends to fade in the shifting sands of the political and social condition of the state and the pattern of intergovernmental relations within it.
