British municipal system...

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I'm in the US. In reference to the UK I've heard about "council flats" (which I guess in the US would be called "housing projects"), council employment, council redundancies, etc. First I assume a council is a town or city government. It seems that municipal gov'ts in the UK have much more economic power, at least they run more services and employ more people than in the US.

In the US town and city gov'ts have services (which they now almost always contract out) garbage removal, street repair, police, and urban development or planning.I get the impression that councils in the UK do a lot more or at least what they do is much different than in the US.

Can someone explain this?

[Blake's Baby]

Erm, there are certain services that councils or groups or councils are responsible for (we have a complicated multi-tier system in some places with Districts and Counties, a simpler 'unitary authority' system in others, and health and education services are more complex still). There is also a relationship to local policing, meaning that part of the local government money goes to the Police. Many services are actually contracted out, but sometimes these are to 'DLOs' (Direct Labour Organisations) which are the old council departments which have been privatised.

Don't know about more economic power - the majority of council funding comes from central government so it's fairly tied to policies that are imposed. And we look at people like Ed Koch and Mayor Daley who seemed to have far more power locally than mayors in the UK (though that is changing as we now have elected mayors in several cities).

Some of the things councils are responsible for:
Libraries; parks; some housing (direct provision of social housing, also rent relief - 'housing benefit' - is handled locally); refuse collection (usually contracted out) and street cleaning (usually still in-house); some health and social care; some education services; museums; some environmental services (often contracted out).

Maybe checking out what some councils do might help?
http://www.london.gov.uk/
http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/

These are big cities (for the UK). County Councils that don't have big cities, or City Councils from smaller cities, might be a bit different -

http://www.leicester.gov.uk/homepage.aspx
http://www.leics.gov.uk/

These are the councils in my area for example.