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.

Cornerstone's Electoral Legislation covers the five principal kinds of UK elections: Parliamentary; European; Local Government; Parish; and Referendums. The legislation governing the conduct of elections is necessarily technical and highly prescriptive with electoral officers expected to absolutely adhere to the rules. As legislation is amended every year this title enables electoral officers ready access to up-to-date legislation. This is a new title in the 'Cornerstone' series which is published with the highly respected chambers.

This book analyses variations among county boroughs in expenditure on eight varied local services, and relates them to political concerns.

This is the eleventh inquiry by the Committee on Standards in Public Life with this particular report reviewing the work of the Electoral Commission. The Commission itself was established as an independent statutory body on 30 November 2000, with a mandate to review or examine such matters as electoral administration, and the conduct of elections and standards of propriety in financing political parties. All these issues have been of recent public concern, and the Committee believes it is important to ask whether the Commission's current mandate, governance arrangements and accountability framework are appropriate for the purpose required of the Commission. The Committee has set out 41 recommendations, including: that the mandate of the Commission should be amended and refocused so that it has two principal statutory duties: (i) as regulator of political party funding and campaign expenditure in the UK; (ii) and as a regulator of electoral administration in Great Britain; further, that is should decentralize responsibility for monitoring and regulating campaign and constituency expenditure in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to regional offices; it should report to Parliament annually on standards of electoral administration; it should have no involvement in electoral boundary matters or have a role in undertaking policy development in relation to electoral legislation; that the Commission should undertake detailed research into the scale of electoral fraud in the UK. The publication is divided into 5 chapters with appendices; Chapter 1: Introduction and context; Chapter 2: Mandate of the Electoral Commission; Chapter 3: Governance of the Electoral Commission; Chapter 4: Accountability of the Electoral Commission; Chapter 5: Integrity of the electoral process