Local Government "Adjustments "
It can be well understood that the Government would shrink from the task of making drastic changes in the machinery of local govern- ment without exhaustive preliminary inquiry ; that very intelligible hesitation has led the Ministry of Health -to the conclusion that there should be no fundamental alteration of the structure " during the period of reconstruction." Such is the decision stated in the White Paper published last Wednesday. Yet it is precisely during the period of reconstruction that new and testing tasks will be imposed on local authorities, many of them on a scale which will strain their present capacity to bursting point. The Ministry has not forgotten the magnitude of the new duties which reconstruction
puts on them—among them housing and town-planning, education and the new services of the National Health scheme. These alone impose tasks far transcending anything that has confronted them before, threatening to stretch beyond existing boundaries—as we have seen in the case of the "overspill" problems of Plymouth and other towns—and requiring large areas for services, as in the case of hospital services under the new Health programme. A dilemma arises from the fact that the Government has pushed ahead in certain national schemes of reconstruction, but has failed to push ahead in providing for the local machinery to cope with them. The proposals of the White Paper cannot be regarded as a final solution of the problem, which ought.to be found through a Royal Commission with wide terms of reference ; they must be taken as offering temporary expedients. The Ministry is not prepared to recommend the creation of Regional Authorities, and falls back on joint authorities operating through Joint Boards or Committees. It recognises the necessity of boundary adjustments, and for this purpose would set up a local government Boundary Commission with executive powers, subject to- safeguards. The problem of London is left over for separate inquiry. Here may be a way out from certain pressing difficulties, but no programme adequate to new needs. One of the aims of the new Com- mission—to improve the quality of the personnel of local councils is of the first importance—though by no means easy to achieve.
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