Local Government Association

The Local Government Association (LGA) is an organisation which comprises local authorities in England and Wales. The LGA seeks to promote better local government; it maintains communication between officers in different local authorities to develop best practice. It also represents the interests of local government to national government. 435 authorities are members of the LGA as of 2016, including 349 English councils (out of 352) and the 22 Welsh councils via the Welsh LGA, as well number of smaller authorities including fire authorities and national parks. The Chief Executive is Mark Lloyd.

The LGA was formed on 1 April 1997, in the middle of the 1990s UK local government reform which created unitary authorities. The association is the direct successor to several per-type associations, most recently the Association of County Councils, the Association of District Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. There continue to be Special Interest Groups within the LGA representing groups of authorities. These are largely per-type— the County Councils Network, the District Councils' Network, the Special Interest Group of Municipal Authorities, and UNISIG, representing Unitary Authorities, but also include groups for coastal authorities, authorities with high ethnicity, and authorities with sparse populations, among others.

The LGA was part of a wider Local Government Group that also comprised:

These bodies worked with local government organisations (regardless of whether they are LGA members) with the objective of strengthening local government's capabilities and providing support for specific issues that are of widespread importance to local government, for example national pay bargaining. The members of the Local Government Group were rebranded in July 2010 as part of the Local Government Group's 'Getting Closer' initiative. However, in 2011 the decision was taken by the association's new leadership to revert to the original LGA style and brand and by April 2012 the sister organisations had all been folded into the LGA as part of a wider efficiency and restructuring exercise.

The LGA has its Head Office at Local Government House (formerly Transport House) in Smith Square, Westminster, London. Its members are various types of English and Welsh local authorities, including county councils, metropolitan borough councils, London borough councils, non-metropolitan district councils and unitary authorities. The LGA does not cover parish and community councils, which are represented by the National Association of Local Councils and by One Voice Wales. In 2008 the Association published the National Improvement and Efficiency Strategy with the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), which saw the creation of a stronger regional presence in the form of nine Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnerships (RIEPs) which were given £185m of devolved funding from DCLG to drive improvement in local government.

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