Local government in England

England has, since 1994, been subdivided into nine regions. One of these, London, has an elected Assembly and Mayor. The other regions no longer have any statutory bodies to execute any responsibilities.

Combined authorities were introduced in England outside Greater London by the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 to cover areas larger than the existing local authorities but smaller than the regions. Combined authorities are created voluntarily and allow a group of local authorities to pool appropriate responsibility and receive certain delegated functions from central government in order to deliver transport and economic policy more effectively over a wider area. There are currently 10 such authorities, with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority established on 1 April 2011, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and three others in April 2014, two in 2016, two in 2017 and one in 2018.

   Metropolitan borough

   London borough

   Unitary authority

   Two-tier non-metropolitan county

Below the region level and excluding London, England has two different patterns of local government in use. In some areas there is a county council responsible for services such as education, waste management and strategic planning within a county, with several non-metropolitan district councils responsible for services such as housing, waste collection and local planning. Both are principal councils and are elected in separate elections.

Some areas have only one level of local government. These are unitary authorities, which are also principal councils. Most of Greater London is governed by London borough councils. The City of London and the Isles of Scilly are sui generis authorities, pre-dating recent reforms of local government.

There are 126 'single tier' authorities, which all function as billing authorities for Council Tax and local education authorities:

• 56 unitary authorities
• 36 metropolitan boroughs
• 32 London boroughs
• The Common Council of the City of London
• The Council of the Isles of Scilly

There are 31 'upper tier' authorities. The non-metropolitan counties function as local education authorities:

• 25 non-metropolitan counties
• 6 metropolitan counties (councils abolished in 1986)

There are 188 'lower tier' authorities, which all have the function of billing authority for Council Tax:

• 188 non-metropolitan districts

There are in total 339 principal councils,[1] including the Corporation of London and the Council of the Isles of Scilly, but not the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, the last two of which are also local authorities for some purposes.

Below the district level, a district may be divided into several civil parishes. Typical activities undertaken by a parish council include allotments, parks, public clocks, and entering Britain in Bloom. They also have a consultative role in planning. Councils such as districts, counties and unitaries are known as principal local authorities in order to differentiate them in their legal status from parish and town councils, which are not uniform in their existence. Local councils tend not to exist in metropolitan areas but there is nothing to stop their establishment. For example, Birmingham has a parish, New Frankley. Parishes have not existed in Greater London since 1965, but from 2007 they could legally be created. In some districts, the rural area is parished and the urban is not – such as the Borough of Hinckley and Bosworth, where the town of Hinckley is unparished and has no local councils, while the countryside around the town is parished.[2] In others, there is a more complex mixture, as in the case of the Borough of Kettering, where the small towns of Burton Latimer, Desborough and Rothwell are parished, while Kettering town itself is not. In addition, among the rural parishes, two share a joint parish council and two have no council but are governed by an annual parish meeting.[3]

Councils have historically had no split between executive and legislature. Functions are vested in the council itself, and then exercised usually by committees or subcommittees of the council.

The chairman of the council itself has authority to conduct the business of meetings of the full council, including the selection of the agenda, but otherwise the chairmanship is now considered an honorary position with no real power outside the council meeting. The chairman of a borough has the title 'Mayor'. In certain cities the mayor is known as the Lord Mayor; this is an honour which must be granted by Letters Patent from the Crown. The chairman of a town council too is styled the 'town mayor'. Boroughs are in many cases descendants of municipal boroughs set up hundreds of years ago, and so have a number of traditions and ceremonial functions attached to the mayor's office.[4] Where a council has both a civic mayor, namely the chairman of the council, and an elected mayor with executive powers, it has become usual for the chairman to take the simple title 'Chairman' or 'Chair'.[5]

The post of Leader of the Council has been recognised. Until 2000, Leaders typically chaired important committees and received a higher allowance to reflect their additional responsibilities, but they have no special, legal authority.

Under section 15 the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, committees must so far as reasonably practicable reflect the political party makeup of the council; before that, it was permitted for a party with control of the council to 'pack' committees with its own members. This pattern was based on that established for municipal boroughs by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and then later adopted for county councils and rural districts.

In 2000, the Westminster Parliament enacted the Local Government Act 2000, requiring most councils to move to an executive-based system, either with the council leader and a cabinet acting as an executive authority, or with a directly elected mayor – with either a cabinet drawn from the councillors – or a mayor and council manager. There was a small exception to this, whereby smaller district councils (with a population of less than 85,000) could adopt a modified committee system. Most councils used the council leader and cabinet option, while 52 smaller councils were allowed to propose alternative arrangements based on the older system (Section 31 of the Act), and Brighton and Hove invoked a similar provision (Section 27(2)(b)) when a referendum to move to a directly elected mayor was defeated. In 2012, the Localism Act 2011 came into force and allowed all principal councils to return to Committee systems, but only a minority did so.

There are now sixteen directly elected mayors, in districts where a referendum was in favour of them. Several of the mayors originally elected were independents (notably in Tower Hamlets and Middlesbrough, which in parliamentary elections are usually Labour Party strongholds). Since May 2002, only a handful of referendums have been held, and they have mostly been negative, with only a few exceptions. The decision to have directly elected mayors in Hartlepool and Stoke-on-Trent were subsequently reversed when further referendums were held.

The executive where it exists, in whichever form, is held to account by the remainder of the councillors acting as the "Overview and Scrutiny function" – calling the Executive to account for their actions and to justify their future plans. In a related development, the Health and Social Care Act 2001, Police and Justice Act 2006, and 2006 local government white paper set out a role for local government Overview and Scrutiny in creating greater local accountability for a range of public-sector organisations. Committee system councils have no direct 'scrutiny' role, with the decisions being scrutinised as they are taken by the committee, and potentially referred to full council for review.

Councils may make people honorary freemen or honorary aldermen. A mayor's term of office lasts for the municipal year.

The area which a council covers is divided into one or more electoral divisions – known in district and parish councils as "wards", and in county councils as "electoral divisions". Each ward can return one or more members; multi-member wards are quite common. There is no requirement for the size of wards to be the same within a district, so one ward can return one member and another ward can return two. Metropolitan borough wards must return a multiple of three councillors, while until the Local Government Act 2003 multiple-member county electoral divisions were forbidden.

In the election, the candidates to receive the most votes win, in a system known as the multi-member plurality system. There is no element of proportional representation, so if four candidates from the Mauve Party poll 2,000 votes each, and four candidates from the Taupe Party poll 1,750 votes each, all four Mauve candidates will be returned, and no Taupe candidates will. This has been said by some to be undemocratic.[6]

The term of a councillor is usually four years. Councils may be elected wholly, every four years, or 'by thirds', where a third of the councillors get elected each year, with one year with no elections. Recently, the 'by halves' system, whereby half of the council is elected every two years, has been allowed. Sometimes wholesale boundary revisions will mean the entire council will be re-elected, before returning to the previous elections by thirds or by halves over the coming years. Recent legislation allows a council to move from elections by thirds to all-up elections.

Often, local government elections are watched closely to detect the mood of the electorate before upcoming parliamentary elections.

Councillors cannot do the work of the council themselves, and so are responsible for appointment and oversight of officers, who are delegated to perform most tasks. Local authorities nowadays may appoint a 'Chief Executive Officer', with overall responsibility for council employees, and who operates in conjunction with department heads. The Chief Executive Officer position is weak compared to the council manager system seen in other countries. In some areas, much of the work previously undertaken directly (in direct service organisations) by council employees has been privatised.

When determining their budget arrangements, councils make a distinction between hypothecated funding and non-hypothecated funding. Consideration of all funding in general is referred to as gross revenue streams, while net revenue streams refers to funding from only non-hypothecated sources.

Historically, central government retained the right to cap an increase in Council Tax, if it deemed the council to be increasing it too severely.[13] Under the Cameron-Clegg coalition, this was changed. Councils can raise the level of council tax as they wish, but must hold a local referendum on the matter, if they wish to raise it above a certain threshold set by central government, currently 3%.[14]

Council Tax is collected by the principal council that has the functions of a district-level authority. It is identified in legislation as a billing authority, and was known as a rating authority. There are 314 billing authorities in England that collect council tax and business rates:[15][16][17]

• 188 non-metropolitan district councils
• 56 unitary authority councils
• 36 metropolitan borough councils
• 32 London borough councils
• City of London Corporation
• Council of the Isles of Scilly

Precepting authorities do not collect Council Tax directly, but instruct a billing authority to do it on their behalf by setting a precept. Major precepting authorities such as the Greater London Authority and county councils cover areas that are larger than billing authorities. Local precepting authorities such as parish councils cover areas that are smaller than billing authorities.[16]

The precept shows up as an independent element on official information sent to council tax payers, but the council bill will cover the combined amount (the precepts plus the core council tax). The billing authority collects the whole amount, and then detaches the precept and funnels it to the relevant precepting authority.

Levying bodies are similar to precepting authorities, but instead of imposing a charge on billing authorities, the amount to be deducted is decided by negotiation. The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority is an example of a levying body. Voluntary joint arrangements, such as waste authorities are also in this category.

Aggregate External Finance (AEF) refers to the total amount of money given by central government to local government. It consists of the Revenue Support Grant (RSG), ringfenced and other specific grants, and redistributed business rates. A portion of the RSG money paid to each authority is diverted to fund organisations that provide improvement and research services to local government (this is referred to as the RSG top-slice), for example the Local Government Association.[18]

Jurisdiction of the West Mercia Police shown within England

Local authorities sometimes provide services on a joint basis with other authorities, through bodies known as joint boards. Joint boards are not directly elected but are made up of councillors appointed from the authorities which are covered by the service. Typically, joint boards are created to avoid splitting up certain services when unitary authorities are created, or a county or regional council is abolished. In other cases, if several authorities are considered too small (in terms of either geographic size or population) to run a service effectively by themselves, joint boards are established. Typical services run by joint boards include policing, fire services, public transport and sometimes waste disposal authorities.

In several areas a joint police force is used which covers several counties: for example, the Thames Valley Police (in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire) and the West Mercia Police (in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, Herefordshire and Worcestershire). In the six metropolitan counties, the metropolitan borough councils also appoint members to joint county-wide passenger transport authorities to oversee public transport, and joint waste disposal authorities, which were created after the county councils were abolished.

Joint boards were used extensively in Greater London when the Greater London Council was abolished, to avoid splitting up some London-wide services. These functions have now been taken over by the Greater London Authority. Similar arrangements exist in Berkshire, where the county council has been abolished. If a joint body is legally required to exist, it is known as a joint board. However, local authorities sometimes create joint bodies voluntarily and these are known as joint committees.[20]

The City of London covers a square mile (2.6 km²) in the heart of London. It is governed by the City of London Corporation, which has a unique structure. The Corporation has been broadly untouched by local government reforms and democratisation. It has its own ancient system of 25 wards, as well as its own police service. The business vote was abolished for other parts of the country in 1969, but due to the low resident population of the City this was thought impractical. In fact, the business vote was recently extended in the City to cover more companies.

The Labour Government released a Local Government White Paper on 26 October 2006, Strong and Prosperous Communities, which dealt with the structure of local government.[21][22][23][24] The White Paper did not deal with the issues of local government funding or of reform or replacement of the Council Tax, which was awaiting the final report of the Lyons Review.[25] A Local Government Bill was introduced in the 2006–07 session of Parliament.[26] The White Paper emphasised the concept of "double devolution", with more powers being granted to councils, and powers being devolved from town halls to community levels. It proposed to reduce the level of central government oversight over local authorities by removing centrally set performance targets, and statutory controls of the Secretary of State over parish councils, by-laws, and electoral arrangements.

The white paper proposed that the existing prohibition on parish councils in Greater London would be abolished, and making new parishes easier to set up. Parish councils can currently be styled parish councils, town councils or city councils: the White Paper proposes that "community council", "neighbourhood council" and "village council" may be used as well. The reforms strengthen the council executives, and provided an option between a directly elected mayor, a directly elected executive, or an indirectly elected leader – all with a fixed four-year term. These proposals were enacted under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.

A report released by the IPPR's Centre for Cities in February 2006, City Leadership: giving city regions the power to grow, proposed the creation of two large city-regions based on Manchester and Birmingham: the Birmingham one would cover the existing West Midlands metropolitan county, along with Bromsgrove, Cannock Chase, Lichfield, North Warwickshire, Redditch and Tamworth, while the Manchester one would cover the existing Greater Manchester along with the borough of Macclesfield.[27] No firm proposals of this sort appear in the White Paper. Reportedly, this had been the subject of an internal dispute within the government.[28]

Since the Coalition Government was elected in 2010 while the thrust of policy is to further promote localism, as within the introduction of the Localism Bill in December 2010, which became the Localism Act 2011 on receiving Royal Assent on 15 November 2011[29] the Coalition has also declared its intention to streamline past regulation, reform planning, re-organise the police and health authorities, has abolished a whole tier of regional authorities and in its one-page Best Value Guidance.[30] voiced its intention to repeal the Sustainable Communities Act and other New Labour commitments like the 'Duty to Involve'. It has however created the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and signalled intent, under the 'City Deals' process promoted under the Localism Act, to create further combined authorities for the North East, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire as nascent city regions. Another aspect of the Localism Act is increased opportunities for Neighbourhood Forums.

The Regional Assemblies and Regional Development Agencies were abolished in 2010 and 2012 respectively. The Local authority leaders' boards also had their funding cut in 2011, though continue as unelected consultative forums and as regional groupings for the Local Government Association.

Further consolidation of local government through the formation of unitary authorities in existing two-tier shire counties have been proposed under the premiership of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, including Dorset, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.