The Government is currently undergoing a review of Local Authority Statutory Duties. If this is something that interests you, you may want to take a look at some information now available on the DCLG website.
The information can be found here. There are two spreadsheets, giving details of most of the statutory duties placed on Local Authorities (it probably has most of them, certainly the most important, but the DCLG confess that they may have missed a few), and a paper with some Q&A.
Then if you want to comment on this, there is a webform where you can do this (it is on the right, a bit above the twitter block). The consultation period will end on 25 April 2011.
I have had a quick look down the list, and I have to say that most of the housing duties look pretty important to me and I would prefer the local authorities to carry on doing them. What do you think?