Talk:Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council

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Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to no consensus to merge. MRSC (talk) 12:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I propose that Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council be merged into Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I think that the content in the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council article can easily be explained in the context of Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned.

An additional ground, which defeats a plea of special treatment as perhaps a more interesting small local authority of the country than most based on combinations of its wealth and media coverage, is the number of its former towns, current districts and sub-districts covered separately in detail. - Adam37 Talk 17:06, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. These are two different things. One is a council and another is a borough, with sufficient coverage in reliable sources to create both articles. MRSC (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Of course but that trite fact alone does not prevent a merge. The borough in perhaps old language is an artifice, a political construct. Your rightly concise prose about its politics can be incorporated into the borough article in the same way as Trafford#Governance and London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. The example of Tower Hamlets London Borough Council should not be followed. - Adam37 Talk 08:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I completely disagree, the borough and the council are two completely seperate topics. The borough is geographical and has nothing to do with the council. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.144.203.249 (talk) 14:16, 13 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Have you considered three points. 1. They are both purely a Local Authority administrative area and its entity respectively. 2. Not much can be said about either topic without covering the other per WP:MERGE (plus the desirability of overlap material) as already in both articles?) 3. The example of many Metropolitan Boroughs up and down the country. P.S. Separate is the correct spelling. - Adam37 Talk 08:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
May I point out that 'geographical region' means a very broad administrative area in England (aside from it being frowned on by many). The more parochial (economic community-level) entities are indistinct in any interesting analysis from the land they cover IMHO. - Adam37 Talk 23:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, though open to argument. (1) The boroughs only exist for the purpose of administration; it seems perverse to separate off an article on the administration when the size of the main article is still so small. (2) They are not completely separate topics. We already include much information on the council in the article on the borough, including paragraphs under Politics and significant parts of the infobox such as the council’s coat of arms, logo, date of incorporation, leadership and website. (3) So long as we maintain separate articles, then we should not include material in the borough article that is licensed only for the article on the council. The use rationale for the coat of arms explicitly “only covers use in the article on this organization represented by this logo” and the use rationale for the council logo incorrectly speaks of it being owned by the borough and incorrectly describes the borough as an organization, which it is not. A coat of arms can only be awarded to people or corporate bodies, not places, and a borough is not an entity that is capable of owning a logo – or anything else. (4) I believe most readers visiting Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea would expect it to include full information on the council and would not expect to have to visit Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council for that. Wikipedia is meant to be educational, but it’s also meant to be helpful. NebY (talk) 17:52, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All of these four points are sound, save 1: NebY should concede on that point only that over many generations urban cities tend to re-jig into their political entities or major hubs and can become inherently a subject for a decent, academic book, not written by one of its most loyal civil servants. This has been achieved (by the state, or social prestige via repeated, consistent, consensus-led address writing, usually by a combination of such difficult to quantify tangible factors such as shopfronts, business names and documents written in a legal setting. This is of course exemplified in the City of London itself. (2), (3) and (4) should be read by the other editors. And finally I leave you with one last thought: have West Brompton and North Kensington been entirely 'RBKC-ified?' (in terms of association), indeed does an article capable of reaching even B-status, exist on what it means to be 'RBKC' (given like most of London it lacks academic study or interest) without breaking it down always to the evolving, named community/postcode level. I will concede the concept that led to the naming of RBKC has prompted nil wealth distinction between early Victorian downtrodden, 'mixed in wealth/class Chelsea' and altogether 'high class' Kensington. Literally because that old distinction was as Bazalgette's sewers were not built and could not predict the property development of Chelsea to follow. - Adam37 Talk 23:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think, with hindsight, we made a mistake to create the borough articles and not the councils. What we've ended up with is a kludgy mess where category confusion causes editors to slip in and out of talking about a body corporate (council) and a territory (borough). This is in part because the council deliberately brands itself as the same name as the district. A further complication is we've scattered content that should appear in the council articles, so the summary article Kensington and Chelsea local elections is a separate article. It is ridiculous that an article "Kensington and Chelsea local elections" exists, but "Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council" does not. It is not possible to give a full account of the council in the borough article because the need to use a summary style relegates detail to these daughter articles. On the matter of the coat of arms, I have pondered this and K&CLBC is formally known as "The Mayor and Burgesses of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea" i.e. the incorporation of the citizens of the borough, so it could be argued the coat of arms belongs to the borough (as a collection of people) as much as the council. MRSC (talk) 11:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Finances section

User:NebY has boldly removed the finances section. I believe it included useful information which was properly sourced and reverted their deletion. Unfortunately it seems to have disappeared again: consensus should have been reached before it was deleted for a second time. NebY should feel free to add to the section if it there are more matters to cover. Dormskirk (talk) 12:26, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The section only described one of the council's functions, the billing and collection of council tax, business rates and precepts (the latter being expressed misleadingly, as the council collects a single consolidated requirement for the GLA, not multiple precepts). The article has already stated this in the Powers and functions section immediately above, so the entire sentence was repetitition and redundant, and it was the only sentence in the Finances section.
It was in any case not appropriate to the Finances section. Such a section should describe how the body is financed (government grants, council tax, retained business rates, LIP, etc), and might also outline the greatest areas of spending, from social care to highways. I would suggest this be done by rough percentages rather than actual amounts to avoid the need for repeated updating, but unless carefully written it would still have to be adapted for each of the 32 London Borough Council articles into which Dormskirk is pasting boiler-plate text. A Finances section could also usefully include material on that particular council's financial surplus or deficit for at least the most recent financial year, its reserves, and exceptional past events such as the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis (Kensington and Chelsea were not so badly hit but other London boroughs had deposits of up to ~£20m in collapsed banks).
The most that a Finances section should say about the billing function would be whether an unusually high or low collection rate affected its finances, but as even normal collection rates are sometimes used in political arguments, we would need to be careful of WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV.
We don't keep empty sections and we don't keep irrelevant repetitions just to keep a section from being empty. As to due process, the Finances section was added by Dormskirk[1] and removed by myself. We have now reached the Discuss part of WP:BRD - thanks, Dormskirk. NebY (talk) 13:33, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am fine for you to add information on how the body is financed, including the greatest areas of spending providing it is properly sourced: please go ahead. As to process, it is true that I inserted the original finance section but that was over a year ago. You have boldly removed it (a year later). The way WP:BRD works is that I now have the right to revert. You cannot genuinely argue that my original improvements to the article were a bold edit which should be reverted?! Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 13:50, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your point about the recency of your edit, but yes, I am arguing that it should now be undone. Happily, WP:BRD is a guideline, not a rule, we have now started discussing the section, and I do thank you for that. I look forward to any input on why it should be kept despite the points I've raised, from you and from other editors. NebY (talk) 14:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am only interested in improving and expanding this and other articles. I believe that the finance section should explain to which bodies the council sends money (as it previously did), but I also agree that there is plenty more that could be added as regards the functions on which the council spends money. As regards process, I also agree that WP:BRD is just a guideline, but it serves a useful purpose and I would encourage you to restore the deleted material and expand it in the way you propose. You have every encouragement from me to do so. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 15:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can't restore that section, for reasons stated above, or encourage you to do so either (though speaking of guidelines, I would encourage you to take account of Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia in future) and I'm conscious there are 31 similar articles at issue, so while I hope some other editors who have this article on their watchlists may help us to consensus, I've put an invitation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject London#London Borough Council articles - Finances section too, which I've tried to phrase neutrally based on our discussion so far. NebY (talk) 16:56, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I give up. I have written very many articles on local authorities and their buildings and inevitably there is some material that is common to particular locales. I have simply sought to expand the article(s) with well sourced material and indicated my support for you to do the same along the lines you have suggested. And all you have done is criticised and deleted my work. Best wishes. Dormskirk (talk) 17:06, 28 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Focus

Remember this is an article about a council, not a borough. It should be focussed on the history of the council, not the borough for which we have a separate article. Wording should talk about the councils, not the boroughs/districts. MRSC (talk) 09:52, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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