Bodies' Publics / Public Bodies, Bodies' Publics.

Public Bodies are organisations that deliver public services, and perform a wildly diverse range of functions in the UK (Cabinet Office, 2015), from the management of land subsidence due to the activities of past coal mining (Coal Authority) to the licensing of the sea bed to companies to build off-shore wind Turbines (The Crown Estates).

In 2010 the UK Government announced a programme of reforms to the landscape of around 900 public bodies that eventually saw 190 abolished, 165 merged and over 130 substantially reformed (Cabinet Office, 2015). The 'Bonfire of the Quangos' was seen to drive an ideological debate about the function, reach, scope and cost of non-governmental organisations, particularly along party political lines regarding the relationship between state and society and the public value of expertise (Flinders, Dommett, & Tonkiss, 2014). .

However, it was through the Bonfire of the Quangos as a subject of journalism (Sparrow, 2012), that the nature of the changes underway, the diminishing role and the variety of public bodies, became interpreted as a productive source for a design brief. The reform process can be seen as a crisis of expertise writ large, where each individual body can be treated as a point of negotiation between legislature and user of a particular entity (forests, foreshores, novel food, coal) to which design can respond.

Cabinet Office. (2015). Public Bodies 2015. London: Cabinet Office.

Coal Authority. About us. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/the-coal- authority/about

Flinders, M., Dommett, K., & Tonkiss, K. (2014). Bonfires and Barbecues: Coalition Governance and the Politics of Quango Reform. Contemporary British History, 28(1), 56-80. doi:10.1080/13619462.2014.882776

The Crown Estate. (2016). The Crown Estate Annual Report and Accounts 2015/16: Conscious commercialism in action http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/annualreport-2016/.

Sparrow, A. (2012). 100 quangos abolished in cost-cutting bonfire. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/aug/22/100-quangos-abolished- bonfire

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