Political structures in England (mainly)

The circulation area of your newspaper covers two city councils. As the county has a hybrid structure of local government, one city is part of the two-tier structure and the other is a unitary authority. This is very confusing to readers and you have been asked to prepare a short article explaining the different structures.

(a) Explain the terms two-tier, unitary, hybrid and city council and indicate where the different structure may be found. List the services provided by a district council, county council, unitary authority.

(b) You have arranged to interview two councillors – one from each authority – about the about the advantages and disadvantages of each structure. List five questions (in total) that you would ask them.

Answer (a):

Two-tier:

Many shires still maintain the traditional structure of a county council (first tier) covering the whole geographical area, with a layer of district councils (second tier) below it. For example: Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, Northamptonshire, West Sussex and Somerset.

However, some district councils are known as borough councils or city councils, if they have the relevant charter, but their status are identical, only the title become ceremonial and do not affect how the councils are running, except that they will have a mayor (boroughs) or lord mayor (cities) instead of the chairman who presides over ordinary district councils.

Unitary:

Unitary authorities run all the local services in the area for which they are responsible.

In Scotland and Wales, all local authorities are unitary.

In England, some shire counties are now composed entirely of a number of unitary authorities, including Berkshire, Herefordshire, and the Isle of Wight. In these counties, county councils have been abolished.

In London, the 32 boroughs and the city of London are all unitary authorities, as are the metropolitan boroughs, which comprise the metropolitan counties of West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, and Tyne and Wear. There are no metropolitan county councils.

Other shires in which county council have been abolished are now covered by just one unitary authorities, like Avon, Cleveland and Humberside.

Hybrid:

Some shire counties which retain county councils may have one or more unitary authorities among districts within their borders. Such counties are said to have a hybrid structure. For example, Bedfordshire, has a county council, three second-tire district councils and one unitary authority, Luton.

City Council:

City council is a purely honorary title bestowed on certain district councils, borough councils, and metropolitan borough councils that have been granted Royal Charter status.

For example, some operate as unitary authorities, like Brighton and Hove, York, Stoke-on-Trent.

However, the majority are actually district or borough councils in a two-tier structure. For example, Cambridge, Durham, Exeter and Gloucester are all districts applied with city status.

Confusingly, seven English cities, such as Chichester, Ely, Hereford, Lichfield. Ripon, Truro, and Wells are actually no more than civil parishes, but which all applied with city status.

The services provided by a district council, county council, unitary authority:

In two-tier areas, the first and second tiers have different duties, although there are some overlaps.

County councils are mainly responsible for:

Education, social services, libraries, fire brigades (which may be run by a separate, joint authority), trading standards, strategic planning (infrastructure), highways (classified non-trunk roads, on-street parking and transport planning), recreation (including arts and museums), and rubbish disposal (although not collections) and other environment services.

District councils are responsible for:

Planning (development control), council tax billing and collection, refuse collection, highways (unclassified roads, footpaths, off-street parking), environmental health, recreation, social housing, environmental services and allotments.

All authorities have responsibilities for economic development and emergency planning.

Unitary authorities are responsible for:

Unitary authorities are responsible for all of the above functions, but sometimes work with neighbouring councils to run joint services when this is of practical and/or economic benefit.

Answer (b):

County Councillor: 

1.Do you think the current two-tier structure provide proficient service to satisfy local people's needs? If yes, how? And if not, why not?

2.A constitutional expert accurately describes the situation in England as a “dog's breakfast”, do you think there is a need for running a two-tier structure and meanwhile unitary structure?

3.Does the government have any plans to reform the political structures in England?

4.Two-tier structure seems to make things complicated than unitary structure, for example, in two-tier structure area, county council is responsible for rubbish disposal and district council are responsible for refuse collection. But in unitary structure area, the unitary authority is responsible them all, what do you think?

5.What do you think the unitary structure running in other areas?

Unitary authority councillor:

1.Do you think the current unitary structure provide proficient service to satisfy local people's needs? If yes, how? And if not, why not?

2.A constitutional expert accurately describes the situation in England as a “dog's breakfast”, do you think there is a need for running a unitary structure and meanwhile a two-tier structure?

3.Does the government have any plans to reform the political structures in England?

4.What do you think the two-tier structure running in other areas?

5.According to the materials I have got here, it says the aim of introducing a unitary structure was to improve the efficiency and transparency of local administration. Could you explain to in details how does the structure manage to achieve its aim?