London boroughs
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| London borough | |
|---|---|
 Greater London shown within England, containing thirty-two London boroughs |
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| Category | Districts |
| Location | Greater London |
| Created by | London Government Act 1963 |
| Created | 1 April 1965 |
| Number | 32 (as of 2008) |
| Possible types | Inner London (12) |
| Outer London (20) | |
| Possible status | City (1) |
| Royal borough (3) | |
| Populations | 150,000–300,000 |
| Areas | 15–150 km2 |
| Government | London Borough Council (31) |
| City Council (1) | |
The administrative area of Greater London contains 32 London boroughs: 12 plus the City of London in Inner London and 20 in Outer London.
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Functions [edit]
The London boroughs are administered by London Borough Councils which are elected every four years. The boroughs are the principal local authorities in London and are responsible for running most local services, such as schools, social services, waste collection and roads. Some London-wide services are run by the Greater London Authority, and some services and lobbying of government are pooled within London Councils. Some councils group together for services such as waste collection and disposal, e.g. the West London Waste Authority. The boroughs are local government districts and have similar functions to metropolitan boroughs. Each borough is a Local Education Authority. Until 1990 the Inner London boroughs were served by a shared LEA, the Inner London Education Authority.
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Shared services are borough council services shared between two or more boroughs. Shared services were previously resisted due to councils jealously guarding their authority. However, as the need for budget cuts in the late 2000s became apparent some councils have sought service mergers.[1] Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham will merge their education services, including school admissions and transport by 2011.[2] In October 2010 Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea announced plans to merge all their services to create a "super-council". Each would retain its own political identity, leadership and councillors but staff and budgets would be combined for cost savings.[3] Lambeth and Southwark likewise expressed an interest in sharing services.[4]
Critics of shared services
The management thinker and inventor of The Vanguard Method, Professor John Seddon, claims that shared service projects based on attempts to achieve 'economies of scale' are a mix of a) the plausibly obvious and b) a little hard data, brought together to produce two broad assertions, for which there is little hard factual evidence.[5] He argues that shared service projects fail (and often end up costing more than they hoped to save) because they cause a disruption to the service flow by moving the work to a central location, creating waste in handoffs, rework and duplication, lengthening the time it takes to deliver a service and consequently creating failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer).[6]
Seddon referred directly to the so-called tri-borough shared services in a recent article.[7]
Nomenclature [edit]
There are four boroughs that do not have "London Borough" in their names: the City of Westminster, and the Royal Boroughs of Kingston upon Thames, Kensington and Chelsea, and (since 2012) Greenwich.
List of boroughs [edit]
Map [edit]
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History [edit]
The boroughs were created by the London Government Act 1963, and came into existence on 1 April 1965 with the creation of Greater London. The elections had been held in 1964 with the new councils acting as "shadow" authorities before coming into power the following year.
They had wider authority than the inner London metropolitan boroughs and neighbouring urban districts and municipal boroughs that they mostly replaced, but less power than the county boroughs of Croydon, West Ham and East Ham, which ceased to exist at the same time.
Between 1965 and 1986 the boroughs were part of a two-tier system of government, and shared power with the Greater London Council (GLC). On 1 April 1986 the GLC was abolished, the boroughs inheriting most of its powers and becoming in effect unitary authorities (combining both county and borough functions). Since the creation in 2000 of the Greater London Authority covering the former GLC area but with more limited powers, the boroughs no longer have all the powers of English unitary authorities.
The City of London is administered by the City of London Corporation, which predates the boroughs.
Former authorities [edit]
The boroughs were created as follows: there have been some changes to boundaries and some boroughs have been renamed.
| Inner London borough | Former areas | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Camden | Hampstead (11a) | St Pancras (11b) | Holborn (11c) |
| Greenwich | Greenwich (22a) | Woolwich (part) (22b) | |
| Hackney | Hackney (9a) | Shoreditch (9b) | Stoke Newington (9c) |
| Hammersmith | Hammersmith (4a) | Fulham (4b) | |
| Islington | Islington (10a) | Finsbury (10b) | |
| Kensington and Chelsea | Kensington (3a) | Chelsea (3b) | |
| Lambeth | Lambeth (6a) | Wandsworth (part) (6b) | |
| Lewisham | Lewisham (21a) | Deptford (21b) | |
| Southwark | Bermondsey (7b) | Camberwell (7c) | Southwark (7a) |
| Tower Hamlets | Bethnal Green (8a) | Poplar (8c) | Stepney (8b) |
| Wandsworth | Battersea (5b) | Wandsworth (part) (5a) | |
| Westminster | Paddington (2c) | St Marylebone (2b) | Westminster (2a) |
See also [edit]
- Borough
- ISO 3166-2:GB, subdivision codes for the United Kingdom
- Political make-up of London borough councils
References [edit]
- ^ Jane Dudman (20 October 2010) Public sector cuts will not hit 'back office' hardest, The Guardian
- ^ Jaimie Kaffash (7 July 2010) London boroughs to share education services, Public Finance
- ^ Pickles backs plan to merge Tory councils, BBC News 22 October 2010
- ^ Lambeth and Southwark councils to merge some services under Labour plan, London SE1 (30 March 2010)
- ^ http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/index.php?pg=18&utwkstoryid=266
- ^ Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, John Seddon, Page 57
- ^ Seddon, John. "Shared Illusions".
External links [edit]
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