Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Executive definition

What does Executive mean? In local government practice, “Executive” refers to the political leadership that takes day-to-day decisions on council services, typically senior councillors holding portfolio responsibilities. In England (and many Welsh authorities) it is a statutory body under the Local Government Act 2000: either a leader and cabinet or an elected mayor and cabinet. It exercises “executive functions”, with decisions (including key decisions) subject to publication, transparency rules and overview and scrutiny (including call-in), while full council sets the budget and policy framework. In Wales, executives are similarly provided for under the 2000 Act and Welsh regulations, though councils may instead operate a committee...

Separation of powers in the UK constitution: doctrine, devolution, executive–legislative fusion, executive dominance, judicial independence and review, and comparative perspectives

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Practice notes

Source of the doctrine of the separation of powers

The roots of the doctrine of the separation of powers are commonly linked to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689), where he argued that the Executive and legislative functions ought to remain distinct. This set out a clear insistence on their proper institutional separation. He warned that human frailty, ever prone to clutch at authority, makes it unsafe for those who draft the laws to hold in their hands the power to enforce them, since they might exempt themselves from obeying the measures they create. The doctrine’s most influential formulation, however, is that of Baron de Montesquieu, reflecting on the English constitution in L’Esprit des Lois (1748), where he identified judicial authority as a third branch of government. He contended that when legislative and executive powers are concentrated in a single person, or within one body of magistrates, liberty cannot survive; fears will arise that the same monarch or senate could enact oppressive laws and carry them out oppressively. Likewise, there is no freedom if the judiciary is not separated from the legislative and executive, undermining genuine liberty. If it were combined with the legislative, the life and liberty of...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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