I would also struggle to do this job in an upper tier authority - when a lot of real public health sits in lower tier, borough or unitary authorities - or where I had to go through another director to get to a chief executive, or did not have the same budgetary control.
Surrey is an upper tier authority so it has different responsibilities to Mole Valley, which has responsibilities for housing benefit for example, that I'm going to have to get to grips with.
As for the other top tier authority next door - Devon County Council - you have to go back to 1987 to dredge up a vote of confidence in the council leader.
A 'county borough' was a 'single tier' authority and regarded within the Local Government Act 1888 as independent of county council jurisdiction or an "administrative county of itself".
An 80-page scheme proposed last month would vest authority in four tiers of government below the provincial level, with some seats reserved for women and lots of mechanisms to make representatives and bureaucrats answerable to ordinary people.
Public concern over housing affordability and risks to the financial stability of New Zealand's economy have led to central government intervention and renegotiation of authority between different tiers of government for land use and infrastructure provision.
England has a mixed system: single tier authorities functioning in some areas and two-tier (county and district councils) remaining in other areas.
It does not include the shire counties - or county councils - in two-tier authority areas, which also face cuts in government money.
He is the Labour leader of Dudley Council and those of us with long memories recall his time on the West Midlands County Council which presided as an upper-tier authority over the seven metropolitan districts for 12 years until it was wound up in 1986.
These new 'districts' were 'second-tier' administrative units under county council jurisdiction, but did not form part of a county borough which were 'single tier' authorities.
These new unitary (i.e. single tier) authorities were largely based on major towns, which acted as regional employment, commercial, social and recreational centres and took into account local transport infrastructure and travel patterns.
