The Future of Local Government

Abstract

It is extraordinary to witness the degree of turmoil and uncertainty that continues to face local government. After years of post-war growth as a key arm of the welfare state, local government found its spending, role and ways of working under challenge from the mid-1970s onwards. The Labour administration under Wilson and then Callaghan started the process. The Thatcher administrations increased the momentum of change and engaged in a series of interventions of an intensity and scope which destabilised the whole system. Yet still no end to the process is in sight as in post-Thatcher Britain a major debate has been launched extending the agenda of change to such issues as the structure and size of local authorities. By the end of the 1990s a new dominant form of local government may have emerged and two decades or more of hange may give way to a period of stability. At the beginning of the 1990s, however, the future form of local government is unclear.