Ethics and social responsibility in local government

In the period leading up to and following local government reorganization there came to light a disturbingly large number of cases of corrupt behaviour by officers and members of local authorities. As a consequence there has been much speculation about the causes of this upsurge and the integrity of the public service generally, but there has been relatively little discussion of some of the wider ethical issues present in public service. This paper does not attempt to establish either the causes or the extent of corrupt practices. It takes attitudes to corruption as a starting point for looking at some of the ethical dilemmas that face people in local government at the present time. It then considers how these dilemmas may have come about and ways in which they might be made more manageable.