Introduction

Abstract

Not so long ago, in a Labour-controlled local authority somewhere in England, there was a problem. The council had ambitious plans to tackle the serious social deprivation in its area, but plans like these cost money, and the central government in London, Conservative at the time, thought that local authorities should be spending less money, not more. This was not just a polite difference of opinion. The local authority, and others like it, had strong views about what they should be doing for their areas. The government’s views were also strong, but were very different. The government, however, had the power to convert its wishes into laws that the local authorities would have to obey; it was to use this power repeatedly. Faced, then, with what was to become a ‘sustained battery of legislative and fiscal measures aimed at securing their compliance with the wishes of central government’ (Carmichael 1995: 292), what, if anything, could the council do to realize its own ambitions for its area? It all depended on the ultra vires rule.