The author, a solicitor by origin, rose to be the Chief Executive of the Kent County Council. He then took a ‘staff’ position as Chairman of a Working Party set up to examine the managerial implications of the reforms proposed by Radcliffe – Maud. The document which was produced in 1972 by this Working Party formed the basis for a substantial proportion of the new organisations introduced in the mid seventies

Inevitably the main interest in this monograph is on the explanations given by the author for the reasons why the proposals of the Bains Report have had to be modified in practice, or have been abandoned since.

Unfortunately this forms only a small part of the total document.

The reasons Bains identifies are: that the new management structure did not take politics sufficiently into account, it did not obtain the wholehearted co-operation of the education service, there appeared to be insufficient work for the new non Departmental Chief Executives, old style Clerks failed to adapt, and there was a lack of training for the new generation.

The author then goes onto to discuss the relevance of the reorganisation of the English local authorities for Australia. Having earlier described it as ‘remarkable’ that both major parties in the U.K. grasped the nettle of reform when it was clearly not a vote catching issue, he is surprised that the various investigations in Australia have not been implemented.

Almost certainly he is correct in quoting local commentators to the effect that the reason for this is their value as a ‘device for maintaining the State Government’s power.’ He then goes on to make the important observation that ‘local authorities do not contain the seeds of their own reform. It must be accepted that local authorities will not themselves seek reform and are therefore unlikely to put forward voluntary proposals.’

Regrettably he offers no way out of the impasse except a bi – partisan policy by the major Australian political parties.

Earlier parts of the book outline the old English system of local authorities and the need for reform. The main reasons were that local government areas ‘did not fit the pattern of life and work of modern Britain’, and the fragmentation between the county boroughs and the counties in which they were positioned.

Then follows a very valuable summary of just what the political parties made of the Radcliffe – Maud proposals, and consequently what emerged as the ‘new System’.

In this section readers are introduced to the Matrix Form of Organisation which is described as a ‘system of interdepartmental groups form by horizontal organisations’. Unfortunately very few readers in the general public of Australia, or even in local government will be conversant with the concepts involved in Matrix as opposed to Monocratic organisations, which therefore need more explanation. Fortunately the rest of the section is more comprehensive and information is presented in highly usable tabular form.

This monograph would make an ideal present for a local government officer about to undertake a long-service trip to the U.K. If he was prepared to come back and try to nurture the seed of reform from within Australian local government.