The principle is the same everywhere: bring the decision closer to the citizen. In practice, the transfer of responsibilities has almost always come before the transfer of means.
Central grants often arrive late in the budget year, which blocks planned capital spending. Own-source revenue rests on taxes that are hard to collect for want of street addressing and up-to-date land registries.
What sets the successful councils apart
Those with the best results have invested in digitising their tax rolls and in publishing their accounts: two levers that markedly improve willingness to pay local taxes.