Local government relationships with community groups: a case study of Leicester City Council

This thesis examines the relationship between local authorities and community groups existing within their boundaries. This is not a new field and a number of significant studies have been carried out on, for example, the classification of community groups or the community groups of which councillors are members. The previous studies are, however, in excess of twenty years old and they need to be updated to take cognisance of the post modernisation era of local government resulting from the Local Government Act 2000. The principal contribution of this research is to fill a gap in the existing knowledge by developing a typology of all relationships. In accordance with the case study methodology that is used, a survey of existing research identifies the relevant theories and issues to pursue. The outcome of this exercise is the framing of the research aims. In addition to the construction of the typology, other aims are concerned with councillors' roles in relationships and the evaluation practices employed by relationships between local authorities and community groups and those involved in them. The final aim is to analyse issues that arose in the course of the research and has enabled a series of matters to be raised on the theoretical framework in which this field sits. Each of the aims is located in the modernised context. The research adopts Leicester City Council and its relationships with local community groups as the case for study. Arising from the examination of existing research, seven perspectives on relationships are identified, which are pursued through semi-structured interviews. Representatives from two community groups with relationships in each of the main classes of the typology constructed in the thesis are interviewed, together with senior officers, front-line officers, executive councillors and back-bench councillors. On the basis of this empirical data, which is triangulated between interviewees and against documentary evidence, a series of conclusions is drawn at the theoretical level about the need to take an historical approach, the existence of an ideological network and its socialisation role and the respective influences of power and discourse at the micro, meso and macro-levels on relationships between local authorities and community groups. The result is that a comprehensive theoretical framework for this particular field of research is identified