The Conditions of Joint Action

Abstract

THE WHITE PAPER on Streamlining the Cities creates a new need for joint action by local authorities. 1 The need arises from a basic tension in the Government proposals. The Government proposes the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) and the metropolitan county councils, while still recognising Greater London and the metropolitan counties as governmental areas, with functions requiring to be governed over wider areas than individual London boroughs or metropolitan districts. It could be argued that the dilemma of the Government arises because it is proposing the abolition of metropolitan government while still believing in it. Thus, if the Government really believed that the London boroughs or the metropolitan districts could carry out the functions of metropolitan government, the need for joint action on the scale proposed would disappear. The issue arises more clearly in the metropolitan counties, where three major functions (police, fire, public transport) representing 70 per cent of the expenditure of those authorities are judged to require joint action at the metropolitan level. The issue does not arise so sharply in the case of the GLC, because the metropolitan police are not under local government control and the Government are removing London passenger transport from any form of local government control. The issue does however arise in Inner London for education and in Greater London for the fire service and for a range of other issues judged to require consideration or action at that level. Joint action can be required for the government of a function, as with education or the fire service. Joint action can be required to provide some facility necessary for one or more functions, as with the creation of a joint purchasing facility. The major issues arise normally in relation to the former rather than the latter, and it is on the government of functions, rather than the provision of means for the function, that this article, like the White Paper, concentrates.