2: Local Administration or Local Leadership? A Brief History

In England and Wales, the history of local government is one of a rule-based system of local administration. Although there have been local forms of administration for hundreds of years, what is recognised as local government is broadly a product of the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The local systems created at this time prevailed, through a series of structural reforms, until the late twentieth century.

Constitutionally, British local government remained (and remains) a creature of central government. Despite current debates around devolution – which we will come to – there is no formal autonomy for local government, and this differentiates England and Wales from many other European countries. When we refer to local government as ‘rule based’ we mean that it was a classic Weberian local bureaucracy wherein post-holders carried out duties allocated through a hierarchical system of formal authority, justified by the need to safeguard public money via an accountability rooted in formal systems (Weber, 1947). In daily usage, ‘bureaucracy’ has negative connotations of delay and of rule-following as an end in itself, but in organisational theory it describes the supremely rational form of organisation whereby goods (or, more usually for local government, services) are allocated according to rules and eligibility rather than on the basis of nepotism or personal friendships.