No one designing a system for delivering public services in a modern democracy would come up with something that looks like English local government. The patchwork of overlapping structures has evolved through generations of gradual reform. It is poorly understood by voters. A majority routinely abstain in council elections.
The government is simplifying the system, ending the duplication of functions between county and district councils. That restructuring project will be combined with a renewed push for devolution in England. Here, too, existing arrangements are inconsistent. Some cities and wider metropolitan areas have been organised into combined authorities with directly elected mayors, each with bespoke powers. Transport and housing policy, for example, might sit under a different tier of government in a different part of the country, depending on whether a devolution deal was done.
