In recent decades, the devolution of power to subnational regional authorities has formed a key element of what has been termed the 'unravelling' or 'unbundling' of the state in many parts of the world. Even in the United Kingdom, with its distinctive global reputation as a power-hoarding majoritarian democracy, the devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since 1998 can be located within this broader devolutionary dynamic. In recent years, this process has focused on 'the English question' and a reform agenda that claimed to offer a 'devolution revolution'. This paper offers the first research-led analysis of the scope, scale and implications of these post-2015 reforms to English governance. It utilizes Jim Bulpitt's statecraft approach to explore the changing nature of centre-periphery relationships within England. The main conclusion has been that a 'rhetoric-reality gap' currently exists and a 'devolution revolution' has not occurred.

The aim of this study was to determine the causes of loss from active duty amongst German shepherd dogs in service with the New Zealand Police Dog Section. Current or previous police dog handlers (n = 149) completed a postal survey for each dog they had worked with during their career including their current dog. Causes of loss were categorised as either retirement, euthanasia whilst still in active duty, death from illness/natural causes, or being killed whilst on duty. Of 182 dogs with completed questionnaires, 48 dogs were still in service, leaving 134 that were retired (94), had been euthanased (24), had died (11) or had been killed (5). The mean and median age at loss for all dogs no longer in service was 6.6 years. The nominal age for planned retirement (8 years) was only reached by 40% of dogs. The single most important cause of retirement was the inability to cope with the physical demands of the job (61/94 dogs or 65%). Degenerative musculoskeletal disease was cited as the primary factor in 42/61 of these dogs (69%). When both retired and euthanased dogs where considered together, 27% were retired or euthanased due to back/spinal problems, and a high proportion of these were believed to have involved the lumbosacral joint. Greater research efforts should be targeted at identification of the factors that lead to degenerative musculoskeletal and lumbo-sacral disease to determine methods of lowering their incidence in police working dogs. Such research could lead to increasing the average working life and 'in work' welfare of a police German shepherd dog in New Zealand.

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The mayoral combined authorities created in England in the mid-2010s were hailed as a new form of territorial governance, tasked with driving economic growth in city regions. Much debate has ensued about the nature, potential and reach of the new organisations, located in a complex web of governance networks, but lacking an explicit policy rationale or clearly identified territorial boundaries. This article examines the funding and financial arrangements of the new bodies, as these embody the character of central–local relationships; these in turn are the critical influence on the activities and priorities of mayoral combined authorities in England. It argues that central government funding transfers are assuming a disproportionate influence on the functions and priorities of mayoral combined authorities, due to the metagovernance framework within which they operate. This incentivises them to develop into ‘grant coalitions’, seeing central funds as the only available route to local impact.

In England, the traditional method of central government redistribution and equalization between locations has been replaced with a greater emphasis on self-sufficiency and entrepreneurism. English local government now faces existential funding questionsa situation that is repeated around the world as the public sector manages the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Financialization has figured large in the study of entrepreneurial behaviour. However, in England, legal and procedural constraints have driven authorities to seek revenue funding from other sources, principally seeking additional property-related revenues. In response, this article presents a novel typology of local government funding sources and offers an original analysis of their implications for local authorities' role. The empirical findings show that the buoyancy and quantum of many funding sources are constrained by prior evolution of location and centrallocal relations: they are not automatic routes to financialization. Conceptually, these findings reveal that methods of financialization, and the local government funding system within which they typically sit, are as likely to be constrained by the evolution and techniques of governance as they are accelerated by it. International debates around financialization, and wider concerns of how locations develop, would benefit from this account of the often-hidden nature and agency of local government funding systems.