Quangos and Local Governance

Abstract

Concern about quangos is not new but has again become a much publicised theme within contemporary debates on the nature of government. Whilst national and regional bodies such as the Housing Corporation and the various funding councils for education have a significant impact on the governance of localities, the focus of this chapter is on those local quangos which have proliferated in recent years and which now deliver a considerable portion of the policies, programmes and services which affect people’s everyday lives. Specifically the approach is to survey eleven kinds of nonelected public body (despite the terminological confusion hereafter referred to as quangos) which operate at the local level in the health, education, housing, training and urban development sectors: District Health Authorities (DHAs), Family Health Services Authorities (FHSAs), and NHS hospital trusts; Higher Education Corporations, Further Education Corporations, grant maintained schools, and City Technology Colleges (CTCs); Housing Action Trusts (HATs) and housing associations; Urban Development Corporations (UDCs), and Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs). The central contextual factor is that there are well over 4800 local quangos with a total budget of over £37 billion, that is almost two-thirds of the equivalent allocation of central government money to local government. Equally important, the ‘new local magistracy’ in England and Wales numbers well in excess of 50 000 compared with under 23 000 elected local councillors.¹