ABSTRACT
Local government is suffering from a momentum of decline comparable to that which afflicted the coal industry in the years between, say, 1920 and 1950. An inquiry into the question of whether the coal industry was attracting men of the right quality in, say, 1945 could only have returned a negative answer. Everyone who cares for local government and values its essential contribution to the British democratic tradition would desire to see the former course adopted. A visitor to England at almost any time during the past twenty years might well have come to believe that the reform of local government was moving strongly forward. A belated recognition that all is not well with local government was shown by the request of the four main local authority associations to the Minister of Housing and Local Government early in 1964 to appoint two committees to inquire into the personnel engaged in local government.
