Britain: An official handbook > 1956

GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION
67
The more important of the committees of the larger authorities divide their work
among sub-committees, which stand to the parent committee in more or less the
same relation as do the main committees to the whole council. The execution of
the policy decided upon by the council and the committees rests with salaried
officers and employees, whose number may vary from about half a dozen in a small
rural district to several thousand in the large counties and in the larger county
boroughs.
Apart from one or two minor provisions regarding the representation of specialists
on committees and the length of time certain members may hold office, committees
of councils are remarkably free from legal restrictions; even those known as
‘statutory’ committees are constituted according to individual requirements and
not according to any set pattern laid down. For purposes of classification, however,
they may be divided into two kinds: ordinary committees and joint committees.
Ordinary committees may be further divided into statutory committees, the
appointment of which is compulsory under an Act of Parliament; standing com¬
mittees, which are appointed in accordance with the standing orders of the council
on a permanent basis according to the extent of the council’s business; and special
committees, which a council may set up for a limited period to deal with a particular
problem that once solved is unlikely to recur.
Joint Committees or Joint Boards consist of representatives of more than one
authority. They are usually established when local authorities co-operate for services
which cannot be dealt with on purely local lines, e.g., water supply, or sewerage.
Committees of a local authority may be advisory or executive; their powers and
duties are usually laid down in the appointing council’s standing orders or, in the
case of a county or large burgh in Scotland, in the council’s administrative scheme.
A council is free to delegate all its powers to committees except its powers in con¬
nection with raising loans, levying rates or issuing precepts, which are legally
reserved to the council as a whole.
Officers and Employees
In December 1954 some 1,411,000 persons (including teachers) were employed
in local government service.
Every council is empowered to appoint such staff as it deems necessary to carry
out its work. Certain appointments are compulsory, e.g., the Clerk, the Treasurer,
the Medical Officer of Health, the Surveyor and the Sanitary Inspector. Even the
smallest parish councils usually employ a part-time clerk. Choice of personnel is
normally left to a great extent to the individual council.
Officers are normally of three kinds: heads of departments, whose duties are
mainly of an administrative and managerial kind; subordinate officers employed in
a professional, clerical or technical capacity; and manual workers who are employed
to do the actual physical work for which the council is responsible. As a rule, senior
staff appointments are made at the instance of the committee or committees
particularly concerned; while most junior appointments are made by heads of
departments, who are also responsible for engaging the manual labour required.
Appointments and engagements are always made in conformity with a set establish¬
ment, and committees are informed of any appointments which they have not
made themselves.
Rates of pay and conditions of service for local authority staff are within the
jurisdiction of the employing council (except where the proposed salary of an
officer requires the approval of a Government Department, as in the case of the
clerk of a county council in England and Wales). They are based on recommenda¬
tions made by the Whitley Councils (see pp. 268-9), of which there are several,