Territorial Justice and Local Autonomy: Loan Sanctions in the Personal Social Services

Abstract

The allocation of publicly-provided goods and services between competing claims is a familiar problem in the economics of public finance. Yet, despite the scarcity of resources in relation to the demand for them in the social services, it is a topic which has attracted less attention from specialists in social policy than it merits. This paper is intended to fill one of the gaps by considering the distribution of key sector capital expenditure between Local Authority Social Services in England. This is a fertile area of study because, despite the growth in recent years of a substantial literature on variations in the provision of health and personal social services and demands for greater geographical equality, there remains insufficient detailed analysis of the economic and politico-administrative process of resource allocation in that area of the public sector. Because of the paucity of published material and the constraints of space the main focus here will be limited to a consideration of the framework of capital expenditure, an analysis of the allocation process and efforts to reform the system of distribution.