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Each of the 32 new boroughs started off with roughly the same population and were to
be responsible for administration of similar services. But the opportunity to equate establishments,
salary structures, administrative procedures and managerial services throughout London
was not taken — this was left to the London Boroughs Management Services Unit which moved
in a year or two later, just when the boroughs were beginning to settle down. Amalgamation
also provided an opportunity for central government to examine local authority finance but, as
far as I am able to ascertain, this was not seriously considered.
It seemed that London was being thrown in at the deep end as an experiment to provide
experience and evidence for the reports of the Committees, set up to advise on local government
re-organisation, which were to follow — Maud (1967) on management; Mallaby (1967) on
staffing; Seebohm (1968) on allied personal social services; the Royal Commission (1969);
the Green Papers (1968 and 1970) on the future structure of the national health service, and
the White Paper (1970) on local government reform - I can think of no other reason for putting
the cart before the horse.
However, amalgamation proved to be the first real step towards management, co-ordination
and integration of the services provided by the local authority. In the past the emphasis
had been on administration of an established system to run smoothly with the minimum of
change. Officers of various departments were on a nodding acquaintance with each other and
tended to work in isolation; overal I direction and co-ordination was lacking. The old system
perpetuated the out dated concept of environmental sanitation and there was a general
reluctance to accept that modern environmental health problems cannot adequately be dealt
with by a departmental and fragmentary approach. The fact that the Health Department was
receiving hundreds of complaints each year concerning defects and deficiencies in the quality
of the environment seemed to be of little significance, and the public health inspectorate, in
their customary anonymity, were left to try and pacify the complainants by operating the powers
available to them.
Amalgamation brought no real change or extension in the duties and responsibilities of
the public health inspectorate, but the new organisation which emerged provided the means for
the various professional and technical disciplines to be brought together to deal with facets
of the same problem — that of preserving and improving the quality of the environment. The
principle of placing under one "Director" a group of professional disciplines which can be
said to have related functions was later recommended by both the Maud and Mallaby Committees.
This type of set up would seem to be necessary to achieve maximum co-ordination and implementation
of any necessary plan of action in relation to housing surveys, slum clearance, urban
renewal, improvement areas, location of industry and noise prevention. But if it is to be really
effective, the relationship between the role of management and the function of the professional
officer must be clearly defined. The next logical step would be to reflect this new approach in
the Committee organisation.
The second Green Paper on the future structure of the national health service was
published in February, 1970. This important document set the seal on the extent of participation
by the local authority in the health service. The present tripartite organisation of the health
service has been held by most people to be unsatisfactory for a long time. The Green Paper
makes perfectly clear the government thinking in this respect. It proposes to set up area health
authorities coterminous with new local government boundaries, which will administer the unified
national health service. It recognises that social work cannot be divided by a hard line and
that the services should be organised according to the main skills required to provide them,
rather than be any categorisation of primary user. It is proposed that the health authority will
be responsible for the services where the primary skill needed is that of the health professions
and the local authority will be responsible for services where the primary skill is social care
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