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The paper will aim to examine the contemporary origins and development of the planning system and housing regulation in England and Ireland. One objective is to broadly explicate how the regulation of housing in England began, with reference to Ireland, and its relationship with the planning system. The other is to outline the swing in England from a hotchpotch decentralised system to a centralised, and back again sharply to decentralised approach to planning and the provision for housing, a swing unparalleled in Ireland.

The approach is to consider the main influences on the regulation of planning and housing, with reference to historical, social and legal regulatory developments, and to broadly assess the role of centralised and decentralised systems.

The regulation of housing was an incidental product of the regulation of public health. The use of town and country planning principles could have assisted such regulation, but were unpopular until the development of a centralised system of planning in the 20th century. This has led to problems in Ireland for the delivery of local services. The change in England under the Localism Act to decentralized system is unlikely to achieve an effective use of local resources. It is unlikely that unwieldy new systems of decision‐making and funding arrangements will improve the provision of housing for low incomes and the poor. A balance between the use of both systems is required.

This paper assesses the impact of social, historical, administrative and legal changes that have impacted on the progress of the relationship between planning and housing regulation in England and Ireland over the last two centuries until the present day.

An Act to consolidate, with certain exceptions, the provisions of the Local Employment Acts 1960 to 1971. [10th February 1972]

A comprehensive description of food law enforcement in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is presented. The history of food law is described together with the probable consequences of future EEC legislation on the UK situation.

An Act to make further provision for securing the health, safety and welfare of persons at work, for protecting others against risks to health or safety in connection with the activities of persons at work, for controlling the keeping and use and preventing the unlawful acquisition, possession and use of dangerous substances, and for controlling certain emissions into the atmosphere; to make further provision with respect to the employment medical advisory service; to amend the law relating to building regulations, and the Building (Scotland) Act 1959; and for connected purposes. [31st July 1974]

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The statement of service performance is a mandatory report provided by local governments in New Zealand. Despite 20 years' reporting experience, the Office of the Auditor-General (2008) criticised the poor quality of these reports. Past theoretical literature has attempted to develop a framework for the accountability expectations of documents provided by public-sector entities (Stewart, 1984). The purpose of this paper is to measure the consistency of the statements of service performance about wastewater services made by New Zealand local governments with the accountability expectations, using an accountability disclosure index. The paper reveals a moderately high level of consistency. “Probity” and “legality” accountability disclosures are high while “process/efficiency” and “performance programme-effectiveness” accountability are less emphasised. The results suggest that accountability expectations provide a useful tool for evaluating statements of service performance.

The purpose of this article is to investigate how two New Zealand local authorities have engaged with their duty under the Local Government Act 2002 (the Act) to foster community participation in decision making, specifically with regard to costs and funding of local authority activities.

A “middle‐range” methodological approach was used which sought to flesh out a skeleton of theory with empirical data to demonstrate the richness of particular contexts. The basic premise was that Habermasian theory provides both a guide to engagement with local, democratic participation and also idealised goals for local authorities under the Act.

The local authorities investigated have taken significant steps to engage with community participation in local authority costs and funding decisions. However, lack of speech competence in the “language of accounting” precludes many community members from participating in informed dialogue on relevant issues. One authority sought to overcome this barrier by way of public meetings; the other by encouraging representative interest groups.

The research findings are not generalisable but are relevant to other organizations similar to those observed.

Broad community participation in local authority cost and funding decision‐making is hampered by the language of accounting. Accountants could do more to accommodate different constituencies for accounting information.

The article highlights two appropriate and practicable approaches the local authorities observed have adopted to foster democratic participation in local decision making. These efforts, but also the remaining problems, are relevant to a broad range of organisations seeking to include different community interest groups in decision making.

Australian fiscal federalism possesses a greater degree of vertical imbalance than comparable federations elsewhere due to a concentration of revenue-raising powers at the level of the Commonwealth government and a concentration of expenditure functions at the state and local government levels. Efforts to deal with this problem have focused on intergovernmental grants. While substantial literature exists on the financial nexus between the Commonwealth and state governments, little research effort has been expended on the local government grants process. The present paper seeks to remedy this by documenting the evolution and role of the local government grants process.

Property managers in the private domestic sector will be aware of the problems which beset that seemingly inexorably shrinking part of the housing market. The complexities deriving from the Rent Acts, and the facts that (a) owner occupiers paying mortgages receive mortgage interest relief; (b) public sector tenants receive assistance with their housing costs in the form of exchequer subsidies; and (c) private sector tenants can receive a ‘hidden’ subsidy in the form of ‘fair rent’ restrictions, while the private landlord himself receives no such help with his housing costs or tax burden — all these combine to make the lot of the lessor of private rent accommodation a less than happy one.

Built heritage constitutes the uniqueness and identity of a place. While being overlooked in existing research, built heritage in small towns is increasingly threatened by dilapidation, exhaustion and disappearance. Therefore, this study aims to examine the challenges in protecting the unique features and identity of small towns with regard to building regulations, guidelines and policies.

A semi-structured interview was conducted amongst a purposive sample of nine stakeholders from different organizations involved in heritage matters in Malaysia to investigate the issues and challenges facing the protection of small towns’ identity with regard to existing protection mechanisms impacting development of the towns. The data were then analyzed using the qualitative software package NVivo 8.0. The summary models imported from NVivo were created to visualize the connections between various dimensions of constructs, concepts and categories identified in the interviews.

The study found that the current issues of built heritage protection at the local level can be classified into five emergent themes: legislative, institutional, economic, social and technical issues. While absence of specific guideline for identifying local cultural places has been identified as the most fundamental issues facing the protection of unique and distinct resources in small Malaysia towns, the paper concludes with a framework of measures that can then be used for identification and protection of small town identity.

This study is the first of many fruitful contributions that examine heritage identification and protection mechanisms at the local level.