This accessible text summarizes and explains the structure ofBritish local government, focusing on key changes introduced duringthe Thatcher/Major years and initiatives implemented by the currentLabour administration. While offering a detailed discussion ofthese policies, the book examines how local government has soughtto respond in a proactive way to a range of important social,political and economic changes. Readers are introduced to local government as a lively and complexsite of political engagement. British local government is set in awider political, social and theoretical context. Throughout, theauthors argue that the attempt by the Thatcher and Majoradministrations of 1979-97 to push local government into the roleof merely administrating centrally defined policies was largelyshort-circuited. While outlining and explaining these changes andtheir effects, the authors argue that far from being defencelessvictims of central government, local authorities devised numerousstrategies to protect their independent policy-making role. Theauthors go on to examine the proposals for change introduced by theLabour government and assess their implications for localgovernment in the twenty-first century. This book will be essential reading for lecturers and students oflocal government, politics, public policy and urban policy, as wellas practitioners.