Introduction

This book addresses the sustained failure to properly fund local government in England. While there has been plenty of rhetoric and policy initiatives around devolution of power to local authorities in recent decades, continuing recently with the English Devolution Bill, there has been far less attention paid to how these endeavours will be practically delivered and, most importantly, funded. In this context, the motivation in this book is to consider how local government in England could be funded differently. How can the continual hand to mouth existence of local authorities, and those that work to support them, be improved? Drawing on a system-based analysis of international local government practice, the authors develop a new theory of embedded autonomy to help understand and frame how local government can be funded effectively in England.