ABSTRACT
During the last two decades elected local government in Britain has had a rough passage. On the one hand, it has seen a loss of powers and responsibilities and on the other, it has seen the rise of a range of powerful unelected local quangos. Local authorities now ‘share the turf’ with a wide variety of agencies (e.g. health authorities, police authorities, primaiy care groups, action zones, partnerships), none of which is directly elected. Elected local government is now but one part of a complex mosaic of organisations concerned with community governance. Stoker provides a useful summary of the situation:
What happened to British local government during the period of Conservative government from 1979 to 1997 was in many respects a brutal illustration of power politics. The funding system was reformed to provide central government with a considerable (and probably unprecedented) level of control over spending. Various functions and responsibilities were stripped away from local authorities or organised in a way that obliged local authorities to work in partnership with other public and private agencies in the carrying out of the functions.
(Stoker, 1999: 1)