The aim of this report is to shed such light on the recent history of
local government in England - providing an in-depth analysis of the evolution of local democracy from 1979 to the present day,
through a review of extant research, official documents and reports.
This is no easy task, as the jigsaw of local government in the UK is
very complex and hard to reconstruct. Local democracy has been
eroded in multiple, overlapping and at times divergent ways. Since
1997, the inception of a process of political devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not in England, has set the
four nations of the UK on very different trajectories. While local
government is a devolved matter in Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland, in England local authorities remain under the tight grip
of central government. Different regimes of local government have
emerged and the centre-local relationship has taken different forms
in each of the UK nations (see Appendix 1). In this report, we focus
on local government in England. In so doing, we argue that England
is the nation of the UK where local democracy has worn away most
starkly.
Local government reform in England has been a persistent feature
over the past decades. The methods adopted by the centre to
achieve this have changed under different administrations, but the
direction of travel has been clear and consistent, with more and
more powers being increasingly chipped away from local authorities.
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