Local government finance and central control

Abstract

The local government systems of England and Northern Ireland are alike in essentials, and their structure and financial basis both date from the last decades of the nineteenth century. In those days, as now, local authorities operated within the limits of powers conferred by Parliament, but in doing so they were answerable primarily to their own locality. This degree of local responsibility rested mainly on the elective basis of the authorities?a major contribution of the nineteenth century reforms?and on the existence of the rating system, which gave them an independent power of taxation. In this way, local government decentralised both administration and political responsibility. The local councils were regarded as responsible bodies, sharing political power with the organs of central government. By contrast, few would deny that?in both communities?this century has witnessed a steady shift of political responsibility away from the local authorities to the centre. In fact, a recent conference of English local authorities was told that this loss of effective power had gone so far that local government was in danger of ceasing to be government at all, and was becoming??simply a system of local administration of national policies?.