The four Boundary Commissions, one each for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, were established in the mid-1940s and have now been responsible for creating five new maps of Parliamentary constituencies. Despite their importance in British political life, very little has been written about the Commissions and how they work, and much that has been written focuses on the short-term issues of the electoral impact of a new set of constituencies. This volume is a study of the Commissions, involving in-depth interviews with all major interest groups and individuals alongside scrutiny of all relevant documents and statistical analyses of the outcomes.

First published in 1966, Local Government in Crisis presents a comprehensive overview of the challenges and limitations of the local government in Britain. William A. Robson discusses major themes like loss of municipal functions and public utilities; transfer of powers from county districts to county councils; increased central control and dependence on central finance; attitude of local authorities to municipal reforms; the Local Government Act, 1958; and work of the Local Government Commission, to showcase the demand for far reaching substantial changes in a) the structure and finance of local government, b) the relations of local authorities with central departments and c) the power entrusted to local councils. This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of public administration, political science, and public policy.

Local government passed unscathed through the political and economic upheavals which followed the Great Depression. Contemporary commentators had every reason to look forward to continued growth and expansion in the role of local government, which was seen as the main vehicle for the social programmes of the comeing Welfare State. That optimism was misplaced. Many of the trends of the early twentieth century have been reveresed. From the vantage point of 1985, local government was in crisis so severe that its continued existence was called into question. In this unique book eleven authors explain what happened and how the local government system weakened. Political, financial, economic and legal issues are explored, as are factors such as housing, planning, and social welfare. This book was first published in 1985.