Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
• British Airports Authority* (1987)
• National Bus Company (1987)
• Municipally owned bus companies (1987 onwards)
• London Transport Buses (1993)
• British Rail (1994-97)
[* BAA owns seven of the principal airports in Britain, including London Heathrow and Gatwick.]
6.3 The assault on local government
Public expenditure by local authorities in general was also an early target of the
post-1979 Conservative Government. The system of government support for local
authority spending generally was revised and based upon a standardised assessment of
'needs'. Spending above government-set thresholds was subject to penalities of grant
reduction and later 'capped' altogether. The discretion which local authorities had
previously possessed to determine the level of rates (i.e. local property tax) charged on
businesses in their area was removed.
During the rest of the decade the Government struggled to find a way of reforming
the system of domestic rates so that the costs arising from local authority policies were
made more evident to individual voters. Eventually it opted for a tax based on a uniform
charge to individual householders, officially referred to as the 'community charge' but
universally dubbed the 'poll tax' after its mediaeval antecedent. The perceived inequity
of the tax prompted widespread public demonstrations and, when implemented in
1989, campaigns of non-payment thereafter. Opponents of the tax however enjoyed
unexpected compensation when Mrs Thatcher, who had converted it into a personal
crusade, found herself forced out as leader by her own MPs shortly afterwards.
Expenditure by the GLC and Metropolitan County Councils (MCCs) on public
transport revenue support was particularly objected to by the Conservative Government.
After 1981 all these councils were Labour controlled and to varying degrees began to
pursue policies of subsidised 'low fares' pioneered by South Yorkshire MCC. These
raised very interesting questions of overall social cost-benefit and long-term impact on
car ownership and travel behaviour . However such issues were drowned out in what
became a public slanging match between the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
the Leader of the GLC, Ken Livingstone - in this earlier socialist incarnation dubbed
'Red Ken' in the popular press.
Following local elections in 1981 the GLC announced proposals for a system of
low fares on London Transport services which the Labour Party had championed in
its election campaign. Despite this mandate and acting within what were thought to
be its powers to subsidise public transport as part of overall urban transport policy,
the Conservative-controlled London Borough of Bromley mounted a legal challenge.
The case was taken all the way to the Appeal judges in the House of Lords who -
astonishingly - came down in favour of LB Bromley. Their judgment was based on
a concept of 'fiduciary duty' which held that, whatever other provisions applied, a
council needed to have regard to the interests of its ratepayers to use revenues wisely.
The GLC was judged not to have investigated and demonstrated sufficiently the
benefits of its proposed action. It was therefore forced to abandon its initial proposals
although these were later reintroduced as part of a conurbation-wide zonal ticketing
system that has since proved extremely successful.
Friction between the Government and local authorities continued during the
1980s. In 1983 the central government grant for transport expenditure (TSG) was
 
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