Keeping communities in the best of health

摘要

With a past firmly rooted in innovation, the precursors of modern-day local government - the pioneering local corporations of the 19th century - fostered the emergence of many public services that we recognise today. Local leaders, such as Joseph Chamberlain in Birmingham, generated social change and community cohesion, transforming the city in the 1890s to become 'the best governed city in the world'. In Victorian Britain, local leadership aimed to establish a cleaner, healthier local environment through co-operation with the private and voluntary sectors, and better local amenities in an era of rapid social and economic change.