United Kingdom Unitary state
| UNITED KINGDOM | / HISTORY |
History and trends
The United Kingdom is a constitutional parliamentary Monarchy. It has no written constitution, but rather a set of laws and customs with constitutional value.
It has a complex system of local government, with several tiers distributed unevenly across its territory. Each constituent nation has its own system of administrative and geographical division and local government. As a result, there are no standard local governments that exist across the entire United Kingdom.
Because United Kingdom does not have a written constitution, there is no constitutional court or specialist administrative court. As such, the existence of local governments is not constitutionally guaranteed. The United Kingdom has undertaken sweeping reforms in recent years, with an emphasis on reducing local powers and redistributing power more generally.
The present-day system is largely based on the Local Government Act 1972, with partial reforms made by an act of 2000. However, these reforms did not confer significantly greater autonomy on the UK’s local governments, which continue to remain under tight supervision in one of the most centralised countries in Europe. The central government still controls between 75% and 80% of local government revenues.
At present, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have just one tier of local government. England also has a regional tier. Across the country, there are 419 local governments (metropolitan districts, non-metropolitan districts and counties, all with equal status under the law).
In addition, Greater London (in England) has the status of a regional authority. Greater London is divided into 32 boroughs as well as the Corporation of the City of London. It is governed by the Greater London Authority and by the London Assembly, whose members are directly elected.
In England, there are 238 lower-tier district councils and 34 higher-tier county councils. In addition, the 36 biggest cities (other than London) have a single-tier authority: the metropolitan district, which replaced the old county council system.
These figures stem from the most recent reform in 1998, which followed a review that began in 1996. In some areas outside London, there are 8,200 parish councils and district councils, which deliver small-scale local services, mostly in small towns and rural areas.
The reinstatement of the Greater London Authority (abolished by Margaret Thatcher in 1985) brought in sweeping changes to the status of the UK’s capital city. The authority’s members are elected by direct universal suffrage, and it has a mayor and a 25-member assembly. The first elections were held on 5 May 2000. The reforms took place following a referendum in May 1998, at which the electorate voted in favour of the move.
Wales has also seen major changes to its system of local government. In April 1996, the previous tiers (8 county councils and 37 district councils) were replaced by 22 new single-tier unitary authorities. There are also 733 local councils, which are analogous with England’s parish councils. Wales also experienced constitutional reform with the creation of the Welsh Assembly without legislative powers following the 1997 referendum and elections in May 1999.
Scotland, excluding its islands, is made up of 32 single-tier unitary authorities. The current system came into force in April 1996, replacing the 53 district councils which were grouped together into 9 regional councils. The three island councils remain. Scotland also has local councils, but these have no statutory function.
Constitutional changes also occurred in Scotland following the 1997 referendum and May 1999 elections, which established the Scottish parliament with certain legislative powers (and more limited tax-levying powers).
Northern Ireland is divided into 26 district councils. Given the country’s long history of troubles, the central government has administered Northern Ireland directly since 1973. However, this situation is likely to change, notably following measures such as the election of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 (power-sharing between Protestant and Catholic communities) and the creation of cross-border cooperation authorities between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Although the UK has a two-tier system, its districts, counties and councils have equal status under the law. In most cases, there is no hierarchical relationship between the two tiers, other than on planning matters. Some powers are shared, while others are not.
An authority at one tier may delegate powers to an authority at another tier.
In most English county councils, all seats are up for re-election. Conversely, in metropolitan districts (big cities) and some rural country councils, only some of the seats are up for re-election each time. Most councillors are elected on the basis of their membership of a national political party.
In theory, the UK system grants specific and discretionary powers to local governments such that they have independent responsibility for a significant portion of public affairs. Over the past 20 years, however, local governments have been stripped of their powers, and local decision-making and financial autonomy has been reduced. In practice, local governments do not have general jurisdiction and can only do what is permitted by law.
For many decades, and especially in the 1980s and 1990s, successive governments have attempted to strip local governments of their public service delivery mandate (particularly on transport). As a result, most public companies have disappeared and services have been farmed out to the private sector.
Since the early 1980s, local governments have been forced to put service delivery out to tender. Similarly, governments have tried – by persuasion or force – to promote the Citizen’s Charter concept, under which local governments and other public bodies are bound by service delivery performance criteria.
Since 2000, the compulsory tender arrangement was replaced by the “best value” system, under which authorities must regularly assess whether the chosen solution offers the best value for money, or whether a competitor could offer better value, and must seek continuous quality improvement.
There are no regional authorities in England, and the idea has never caught on in the country. The government has created Regional Assemblies dominated by local governments and with strong ties to the business world, but their members are not elected (although the government has recently unveiled proposals to hold elections by direct universal suffrage). Local governments in Scotland and Wales are now answerable to their respective parliaments.
Administrative supervision is extremely tight. Officially, there is no system of prior supervision. In reality, however, practices often amount to prior supervision in all but name, and in some cases local governments are even subject to expediency controls.
- Key examples of these practices include:
- a cap on local taxes, which was introduced in 1984
- financial audits (in England), which focus not just on the regularity of expenditure, but also on the effectiveness of spending (especially since 2000) – a practice that is tantamount to a form of supervision
- the fact that local governments must obtain approval from a secretary of state before borrowing to buy land or build.
On the question of local finance, local governments only control between 20% and 25% of their budgets. The majority of funds (75% to 80%) comes from central government, and 20% of this money is earmarked for specific projects. Local governments do not collect personal income taxes.
Local governments cooperate to a certain extent. In England and Wales, local governments can enter into various joint arrangements pursuant to article 101 of the 1972 Local Government Act. Under these arrangements, for example, one authority might deliver a service on behalf of another, or two authorities might adopt pooled procurement procedures (which does not prevent delivery of the service being awarded to private companies).
Joint statutory entities and joint councils (comprising representatives of constituent local governments and funded from tax receipts) are responsible for discharging certain functions, such as household waste collection in London. In some cases, the government may create entities of this type if it takes the view that entities formed voluntarily are not satisfactory.
Single-purpose inter-municipal consortia are known as “joint boards” and are compulsory in some areas (fire and rescue, police).
- The United Kingdom’s local government landscape changed between 2000 and 2011[1]
419 municipalities and a population of 63 million people. Since the 1970s, the United Kingdom has made a sustained effort to streamline (and hence reduce) its local government landscape at a time when its population has grown steadily. In 2050, the UK is expected to have the biggest population in Europe (77 million).
Like many European states, the United Kingdom has seen the number of local governments increase over its history. Yet the country has undertaken sweeping reforms of its local government landscape, at first modestly in the 1970s, then at a much faster pace between 2000 and 2011 – all with scant regard for historical legal boundaries.
The 2011 local government reforms officially did away with the country’s long-standing divisions, abolished regions and counties from the hierarchy, and strengthened the pre-existing division between metropolitan districts, non-metropolitan districts and London boroughs.
Following these reforms, the United Kingdom has four types of local government:
- England’s non-metropolitan areas include 27 ceremonial counties with weaker statutory powers, divided into 201 non-metropolitan districts. Unlike unitary authorities, non-metropolitan districts remain under the hierarchical authority of the counties, even though successive reforms have increased their autonomy (on education policy, public spending, payment of local allocations, etc.).
- The United Kingdom’s big cities, other than London, and corresponding counties have been divided into metropolitan districts. In metropolitan areas, the counties were stripped of their statutory powers in the 1980s.
- The boundaries of Greater London have successively marked out a region, then a unitary authority and, most recently, a separate authority in its own right – the Greater London Authority, created by a referendum in 2000 and led by the Mayor of London and a 25-member elected assembly. The Greater London Authority governs in partnership with the 33 metropolitan boroughs including the Corporation of the City of London, which is represented by its mayor.
- Greater geographical uniformity: the country’s 419 local governments vary in size depending on their specific characteristics (urban area, low population density, etc.). Some cover an entire region, while others are limited to a single London borough.
The fact that the ceremonial counties and regional boundaries have been retained reveals the inherent difficulties in ripping up the local government map and starting afresh. Yet the reforms tend towards gradual abolition of the intermediate tiers in the interest of better local governance and greater autonomy.
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Key reforms:
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[1] iFRAP article, 2013