The Local Government Act 2000 established the system of ‘overview and scrutiny’ in a majority of English local authorities. Ostensibly an attempt to transfer some of the features of the parliamentary/government decisionmaking process, the new system has not been able entirely to replace its...

Compared with the constitutional changes introduced elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in the English regions a more cautious approach has been adopted based on administrative decentralisation. A key feature of the government’s reforms has been the strengthening of regional spatial planning and...