Local Government

Abstract

The United Kingdom is a unitary, multi-national state. Consequently, all political authority is ultimately centralised. Constituencies in all the component parts of the United Kingdom — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland — send representatives to the national Parliament at Westminster. Even within the nations and regions of the country, the words ‘local government’ are a somewhat misleading term used to describe what has become largely the implementation and delivery of national policies under the guidance of locally elected Councillors. Local authorities (another term for the units of local government in the United Kingdom) do not have any real autonomy and are constitutionally subordinate to Parliament at Westminster. What they can and cannot do is specified in Acts of Parliament (as interpreted by the Courts), which means that Parliament at Westminster can both create and abolish local authority powers and, indeed, local authorities themselves.