Local Government Boundary Commission for England : Corporate plan 2010-11 To 2014-15

On cover & title page: Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000

This volume was first published in 1979, just a few years after the Local Government Act of 1972 redrew the map of British local government. Local authorities were also encouraged to change their organization and methods of work; anxiety was expressed about finance, councillor 'calibre' and the credibility of the whole system itself; and neighbourhood councils and public participation in planning were introduced. John Dearlove's aim is to make sense of these changes and the discussion they generated. He does this by showing that both the official case for reorganization and the academic discussion of it have hindered their own understanding by uncritically accepting superficial traditional wisdoms which fail to reveal the concealed ideological positions behind reorganization. Thus, he aims to develop a truly political perspective on reorganisation which is rounded out and given greater depth by the insertion at appropriate points of comparative material drawn from American experience and studies.

Originally published in 1974, this study concerns the politics of local government reform between 1942-1974 and describes the struggles between the Ministries, the Local Government Associations and political parties. The political manoeuvrings of the various groups involved are analysed and a theory proposed about the reform of political structures in general.

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.

On cover & title page: Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000