英国地方政府

Councils have historically had no split between executive or legislature. Functions are vested in the council itself, and then exercised usually by committees or subcommittees of the council. The post of leader was recognised, and leaders typically chair several important committees, but had no special authority. The chair of the council itself is an honorary position with no real power.

在《1989年地方政府和議會法》的第15節，committees must roughly reflect the 政黨 makeup of the council; before it was permitted for a party with control of the council to 'pack' committees with their own members.

This pattern was based on that established for 自治區s by the 1835年自治法人法, and then later adopted for 郡議會s and 農業區s.

2000年，英國國會通過2000年地方政府法 to force councils to move to an executive-based system, either with the council leader and a cabinet acting as an executive authority, or with a 直選市長, either with a mayor and cabinet drawn from the councillors; or a 市長及郡經理. There is a small exception to this whereby smaller district councils (人口少於80,000) can adopt a modified committee system.

Most councils are using the council leader and cabinet option, whilst 52 smaller councils have been allowed to propose alternative arrangements based on the older system (Section 31 of the Act), and 布賴頓-霍夫 invoked a similar provision (Section 27(2)(b)) when a referendum to move to a directly-elected mayor was defeated.

There are now twelve directly-elected mayors, in districts where a referendum was in favour of them. Many of the mayors are independents (notably in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough, which in parliamentary elections are usually 英國工黨 strongholds). Since May 2002 only a handful of referendums have been held, and they have all been negative apart from Torbay. Of the mayors, all but Stoke-on-Trent's are mayor and cabinet-based. Having won the 2005 General Election and a third term of office, the government is approaching the issue in a new way and is considering introducing new Elected Mayors on the basis of larger 'City Region' areas which will mean a reorganisation of the local authorities affected into larger units with wider powers. In any case, the issue may be given fresh impetus with a number of Mayoral referenda being triggered by campaigns receiving the necessary 5% support of the local authority electorate.

The Executive, in which ever form it is, is held to account by the remainder of the Councillors acting as the 'scrutiny function' - calling the Executive to account for their actions and to justify their future plans. As a new concept within local government, this is currently an under-developed part of local municipal administration.

[编辑] Officers

Councillors cannot do the work of the council themselves, and so are responsible mainly for appointment and oversight of officers, who are delegated to perform most tasks. Local authorities nowadays have to appoint a 'Chief Executive Officer', with overall responsibility for council employees, and who operates in conjunction with department heads. The Chief Executive Officer position is weak compared to the council manager system seen in other countries (and in Stoke).

Much work undertaken directly by council employees has now been privatised.

[编辑] 職能及權力

Districts are responsible for leisure, environmental health, housing — including the provision of social housing and housing benefit, rubbish collection, and local roads. Counties are responsible for more strategic services such as education, libraries, main roads, social services, trading standards and transport. Unitary authorities exercise all these functions.

All sorts of councils also have a general power to 'promote economic, social and environmental well-being' of their area. However, like all public bodies, they are limited by the doctrine of ultra vires, and may only do things that common law or an Act of Parliament specifically or generally allows for - in contrast to the earlier incorporated municipal corporations which were treated as natural persons and could undertake whatever activities they wished to.

Councils may promote Local Acts in Parliament to grant them special powers. For example, Kingston upon Hull, had for many years a municipally-owned telephone company, Kingston Communications.

[编辑] Joint-boards

Local authorities sometimes provide services on a joint basis with other authorities, through bodies known as joint-boards. Joint-boards are not directly elected but are made up of councillors appointed from the authorities which are covered by the service.

Typically joint-boards are created to avoid splitting up certain services when unitary authorities are created, or a county or regional council is abolished.

In other cases, if several authorities are considered too small (either in terms of geographic size or population) to run a service effectively by themselves, joint-boards are established. Typical services run by joint-boards include policing, fire services, public transport and sometimes waste disposal authorities.

If a county is too small to justify its own police force, a joint police force is used which covers several counties, for example the West Mercia Constabulary covers 什羅普郡, Telford and Wrekin, 赫裏福德郡(Herefordshire)和伍斯特郡(Worcestershire)。

In the six metropolitan counties the metropolitan borough councils, also appoint members to joint county-wide Passenger Transport Authorities to oversee 公共交通, and joint waste disposal authorities, which were created after the county councils were abolished.

Joint-boards were used extensively in 大倫敦 when the 大倫敦議會 was abolished, to avoid splitting up some London wide services. but these functions have now been taken over by the Greater London Authority.

Similar arrangements exist in 伯克郡 where the 郡議會was abolished, and in some former Scottish regions such as Strathclyde, where the regional councils have been abolished.

If a joint body is legally required to exist it is known as a joint-board. However local authorities sometimes create joint bodies voluntarily and these are known as joint-committees.

[编辑] Corporation of London

The 倫敦 covers a square mile (2.6 km²) in the heart of London. It is governed by the Corporation of London, which has a unique structure. The Corporation has been broadly untouched by local government reforms and democratisation. The business vote was abolished for other parts of the country in 1969年, but due to the low resident population of the City this was thought impractical. In fact, the business vote was recently extended in the City to cover more companies.

[编辑] Funding

Local councils are funded by a combination of central grants and Council Tax, a locally set tax based on house value, along with business rates. The proportion of revenue that comes from Council Tax is low, meaning that if a council wishes to increase its funding modestly, it has to put up Council Tax by a large amount. Central government retains the right to 'cap' Council Tax if it deems it to be too much. This is an area of debate in British politics at the moment, with councils and central government blaming each other for council tax rises.

Council Tax is collected by the district-level council. Authorities such as the GLA, parish councils, county councils, passenger transport authorities, fire authorities, police authorities, and national parks authorities can make a precept. This shows up as an independent element on council tax bills, but is collected by the district and funnelled to the precepting authority. Some joint ventures are instead funded by levy.

[编辑] 選舉

[编辑] 英格蘭及威爾斯

The area which the council covers is divided into electoral divisions - known as in district councils as 'wards', and in county councils as 'electoral divisions'. Each ward can return one or more members - multi-member wards are quite common. There is no requirement for the size of wards to be the same within a district, so one ward can return one member and another ward can return two. Metropolitan borough wards must return a multiple of three councillors, whilst until the Local Government Act 2003 multiple-member county electoral divisions were forbidden. [1]

In the election, the candidates to receive the most votes win - the multi-member plurality system. There is no element of proportional representation, so if four candidates from the Mauve Party poll 2,000 votes each, and four candidates from the Taupe Party poll 1,750 votes each, all four Mauve candidates will be returned, and no Taupe candidates will. Although this has been said to be undemocratic, minor and local single-issue parties do tend to do much better at local elections than they do in general elections, so the case for reform is perhaps less clear. In any event, the system is not likely to change for the foreseeable future.

The term of a councillor is usually four years. Councils may be elected wholly, every four years, or 'by thirds', where a third of the councillors get elected each year, with one year with no elections. Recently the 'by halves' system, whereby half of the council is elected every two years, has been allowed. All Welsh councils are elected all at once on a four-year cycle, the year after the Welsh Assembly elections.

Sometimes wholesale boundary revisions will mean the entire council will be re-elected, before returning to the previous elections by thirds or by halves over the coming years.

[编辑] 蘇格蘭及北愛爾蘭

在蘇格蘭, the Labour-Liberal Democrat Scottish Executive coalition agreed to introduce the single transferable vote for local government elections from 2007 onwards as part of its programme for government for the 2003-2007 session of the Scottish Parliament. Proportional representation for local government was a long-standing objective of the Liberal Democrats, and the party made it a non-negotiable condition of their signing up to a second coalition with Labour. Legal effect was given to the parties' agreed policy by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Wards will elect three or four members each, and elections will continue to take place on the same day as those to the Holyrood legislature.

Elections take place every four years, the same year as the elections to the Scottish Parliament. This recently replaced a three-year cycle. The last elections took place in 2003 (see UK local elections, 2003), and the next elections are due in 2007 (see UK local elections, 2007).

在北愛爾蘭, local elections also use STV, with several multi-member electoral areas in each district. As in Scotland, elections take place for the whole council every four years. The last elections took place in 2005 (see UK local elections, 2005), and the next elections are due in 2009 (see UK local elections, 2009).

Local councils have various local responsibilities. Typical activities undertaken by a parish council include allotments, parks, public clocks, and entering Britain in Bloom. They also have a consultative role in planning.

The absence or presence of local councils does not count towards whether a district is unitary or not. Councils such as districts, counties and unitaries are known as principal local authorities in order to differentiate them in their legal status from parish and town councils, which are not uniform in their existence.

Local councils tend not to exist in metropolitan areas but there is nothing to stop their establishment. For example, Birmingham has a parish, New Frankley. However, parishes have not existed in Greater London since 1965 but a recent government White paper and the 2005 Labour Party election manifesto signalled that the legislative ban would be lifted to enable their creation.

In some districts, the rural area is parished and the urban is not - such as in the borough of Shrewsbury and Atcham, where the town of Shrewsbury is unparished and has no local councils, while the countryside around the town is parished.

[编辑] Boundaries

Responsibility for minor revisions to local government areas falls to a different body in each part of the UK: the Boundary Committee for England, the Local Government Boundary Commission for Scotland, the Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales and the Local Government Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland.

Revisions are usually undertaken to avoid borders straddling new development, to bring them back into line with a diverted watercourse, or to align them with roads or other features.

[编辑] 規模

議會的規模各地有所不同。The most populated unitary authority area in England is Birmingham (a metropolitan borough) with 977,087 people (2001 census), and the least populated non-metropolitan unitary area is Rutland with 34,563. However, these are outliers, and most English unitary authorities have a population in the range 150,000 to 300,000.

The smallest non-unitary district in England is Teesdale at 24,457 people, and the largest Northampton at 194,458. All but 9 non-unitary English districts have less than 150,000, though.

[编辑] 名稱

Where a district is coterminous with a town, the name is an easy choice to make. In some cases, a district is named after its main town, despite there being other towns in the district. Confusingly, such districts sometimes have city status, and so for example the City of Canterbury contains several towns apart from Canterbury, which have distinct identities.

They can be named after traditional subdivisions (Spelthorne), rivers (Eden, Arun), a modified version of their main town's name (Harborough, Wycombe), or after a geographical feature in the district (Cotswold, Cannock Chase). Purely geographical names can also be used (South Bucks, Suffolk Coastal, North West Leicestershire).

In Great Britain, councils have a general power to change the name of the district, and consequently their own name. In England and Wales this is exercised under section 74 of the Local Government Act 1972. Such a resolution must have two thirds of the votes at a meeting convened for the purpose.

[编辑] Ceremonial functions

The boroughs are in many cases descendants of boroughs set up hundreds of years ago, and so have accreted a number of traditions and ceremonial functions.

In borough councils not to have adopted a directly-elected mayor; the chair of the council is the mayor. In certain cities the mayor is known as the Lord Mayor. Councils may make people honorary freemen or honorary aldermen.

[编辑] 歷史

主条目：英國地方政府歷史

Local government in a recognisably modern form emerged during the late 19th century. Most importantly, the 《1888年地方政府法案》 created 郡議會 and county boroughs across England and Wales, the following year this was extended to 蘇格蘭, and by 1898年 to 愛爾蘭。

Further reforms in the 1890s divided counties in England, Wales and Ireland into various lower-tier districts, including rural districts, urban districts, municipal boroughs, and in the 倫敦郡, metropolitan boroughs.

The system created in the late 19世紀, survived largely unchanged for most of the 20世紀. The first major reform took place in 1965年 when 大倫敦 was created with a new 大倫敦議會 replacing the old 倫敦郡議會.

Another large scale reform took place in 1974年, by the 1972年地方政府法案. This abolished county boroughs and created a uniform two-tier system everwhere. In England it created Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties, which were sub-divided into non-metropolitan and metropolitan districts, and merged some smaller counties such as Rutland (into Leicestershire), Herefordshire and Worcestershire (into Hereford and Worcester). A number of new counties were created including Avon, Humberside and Cleveland. Several of the new counties created were called metropolitan counties which had a different division of powers between county and district councils. In Wales the Act created a set of entirely new counties for local government purposes.

In 1975年 Scotland's counties were abolished and replaced with two-tier Regions and districts.

From 1974年 (蘇格蘭1975年) to 1986年, the whole of England, Scotland and Wales had a two-tier system, with district councils and county (or in 蘇格蘭, regional) councils.

This was changed in 1986年 by the abolition of metropolitan county councils and the 大倫敦議會. A local government reform took place in the 1990年代, which was instituted by the then Conservative Major government. 蘇格蘭 and 威爾斯 moved to a fully unitary system in 1996年, whilst expansion of unitary government in England happened haphazardly, leaving parts of the country unitary, and other parts two-tier — a system similar to that which prevailed between 1890年 and 1974年 in the whole of Great Britain. Unitary local government was inserted as a precondition for the introduction of any elected Regional Assemblies under the Labour government's former plans to introduce such bodies prior to the rejection by referendum in North East in November 2004. The government then said that it had no plans to introduce unitary local government in England but since the General Election the government has floated the idea of voluntary mergers of local councils, avoiding a costly reorganisation but achieving desired reform. For instance, the guiding principles of the government's 'New Localism' demand levels of efficiency not present in the current over-duplicated two-tier structure.

The system in Northern Ireland dates from 1973年; before then a system was used identical to that used on the mainland before 1974. It does not resemble the systems on the mainland in that the 26 district councils are mainly responsible for environmental services, with education and social services being provided at the provincial level through area boards run from the various civil service departments. The Review of Public Administration, which ran from 2002年 to 2005年, examined the options for reducing the number of district councils in the province while passing powers down to new councils and has proposed seven new 'super councils'.

[编辑] 將來的英格蘭

The Government is currently conducting a review of local government in England and is expected to produce a White Paper in the summer of 2006, for introduction in the 2006/2007 legislative session. Details are uncertain, but the creation of new unitary authorities is possible, along with an introduction of the "city region" concept, which has been suggested might mean the restoration of strategic authorities for the metropolitan areas (whether with the 1974 boundaries or not). A report released by the IPPR's Centre for Cities in February 2006, City Leadership: giving city regions the power to grow, proposed the creation of two large city-regions based on Manchester and Birmingham : the Birmingham one would cover the existing West Midlands metropolitan county, along with Bromsgrove, Cannock Chase, Lichfield, North Warwickshire, Redditch and Tamworth, whilst the Manchester one would cover the existing Greater Manchester along with the borough of Macclesfield.

With respect to reform in the shire counties, the government apparently is hoping for local councils to volunteer for such reorganisation and submit proposed schemes. The Minister, David Miliband has criticised the Banham Review for its long and drawn out process, and is presently engaged on a tour of England to discuss matters with local council officials.

Several boroughs, including Ipswich, Oxford, Norwich and Exeter are hoping for unitary status on their present boundaries.

Elections to the new authorities would take place in 2008, with them taking up their powers on April 1, 2009. It has been suggested by the opposition that 2007 council elections might be suspended because of this - the government has denied that any decision has yet been taken.