Transparency International’s report ‘Corruption in Local Government: The Mounting Risks’ warns that an unintended consequence of recent changes, such as those made in the Localism Act and the Local Audit and Accountability Act, may be the creation of an enabling environment for corruption. The report notes that experts hold widely different views about the scale and prevalence of corruption in local government, but there was general consensus that recent changes would increase the risk of corruption happening in future. It identifies sixteen recent legislative changes which increase the risks, as well as other trends such as the decline in scrutiny by local press and the move to more private sector out-sourcing. This report includes twenty-two recommendations, including that the Government should conduct a corruption risk assessment and strengthen whistleblowing procedures.

Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, Issue 15/16, June 2015 For more than 100 years, non-landed and non-establishment interests in rural England were represented by a succession of three quasi-independent government bodies (quangos). These were the Development/Rural Development Commissions, the Countryside Agency, and the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC). Their roles embraced, to varying degrees, policy, practice, and advocacy. In 2013 the British government closed the CRC and absorbed aspects of its responsibilities into the civil service. The implications of this decision for the disadvantaged people and places of rural England are explored. The potential for land-related interest groups and traditional elites to increase their influence as a consequence, is considered. First the histories of the three quangos and the main interest groups are described. The views of the latter – and others with related interests - were sought (unsuccessfully), together with the opinions of people involved in one or more of the quangos, and, or, the civil service successor unit. These are presented and discussed and conclusions are drawn relating to consequential ‘gaps’ in independent policy and research. The aim is to stimulate discussion about the implications for rural England of closing the CRC; the loss of this small organisation may have unexpected long-term consequences. The eventual significance of this decision has yet to be determined.

Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance - Issue 15, June 2014 The research discussed in this paper was prompted by the writer’s interest in the roles of England’s small country (market) towns. It has two aims: first, to discover the extent to which the work programmes announced in the British government’s Rural White Paper (RWP 2000) (DETR-MAFF 2000) are recognised by town clerks, and second, to find out what town councils are doing, either on their own, or with others, and to gauge the potential and desire that they have for a greater degree of autonomy for smaller councils. In both cases the data was gathered from an online questionnaire sent to town clerks.

In 1997 Local Government Studies published an article (Asquith, 1997) which assessed the perceptions of managerial and political elites in eight English local authorities towards change management against the background of Conservative Governments' reform agendas. The article argued that the authorities could be placed on a continuum depending on their state of organisational evolution, with some authorities being better equipped to manage change than others. During 2005 the authorities were revisited to ascertain how they had adapted to deal with the reforming Blair Governments since 1997. What this article shows is that characteristics evidenced in the original work in the authority deemed to have evolved the most, were present in those authorities revisited.