Political management and local government: The views of local authority chief executives

The Labour Government. has introduced radical measures to change local authorities' constitutions. These include a requirement to abandon the traditional committee system and to replace it with political executives. Local authority chief executives will play a critical role in these changes and they are also uniquely placed to offer observations on the likelihood of the measures being successful. Because of this, a questionnaire survey was undertaken of the chief executives of all local authorities in England and Wales to discover how councils-are responding to the Government's measures and to obtain their views on the proposed political management arrangements.