ABSTRACT
There was a wide measure of agreement within the political parties that the ideal solution to promote greater unification would be to hand over the health services to local government. However, as Klein points out, this idea, while supported in principle, was also recognized to be a political non-starter due to the continuing deep hostility of the medical profession to any notion of coming under local government control. Similarly, the proposal to transfer local authority services to the NHS was opposed by the local authorities (although they did lose their community health services). Instead, and very much as a second-best solution, the boundaries of the new Health Authorities (HAs) were aligned with those of the new local authorities (Klein 1995, p. 82), see Figure 2.2. The new innovations were:
Boards. Below the Regions were a new layer of Area Health Authorities, and within the larger Areas was a further layer of District Management Teams.
