The Impact of Party Politics on Patterns of Service Provision in English Local Authorities

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Abstract
The UK central government recommends that English local authorities should publish a series of performance indicators in order to enhance accountability. However, interpretation of these data is complicated by the need to take account of the environmental circumstances faced by authorities. This paper uses the needs indicators developed by the government to allocate grants-in-aid to determine whether it is possible to build satisfactory models of local authority behaviour based on the suggested performance indicators. The findings are positive, and afford the opportunity to explore the nature of the impact of political control on local authority behaviour. In general, although the precise nature of the preferred model varies from service to service, the findings confirm that political control is an important determinant of provision in most of the services for which local government is responsible.

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