Exercise 1: Why the General Power of Competence Is a Genuinely Dramatic Legal Change — Possible Solution ================================================================================================================ The chapter's own real, verified account of the historic ultra vires doctrine establishes a genuinely restrictive default: local authorities, as real statutory corporations, had no authority to act at all unless a specific real statute explicitly permitted that exact action. This meant a council wanting to try something genuinely new or unusual - even something harmless or clearly beneficial - would first need to establish that some existing law actually authorized it, and if none did, the action was simply not legally available to it, no matter how sensible it seemed. The chapter's own real, quoted definition of the Localism Act 2011's general power of competence reverses this default entirely: "a local authority has power to do anything that individuals generally may do." This is a fundamentally different real legal starting point - instead of needing explicit permission for each specific action, an eligible local authority is now presumed to have the same broad, general freedom of action an ordinary individual person would have, with restrictions being the exception that must be specifically identified, rather than permission being the exception that must be specifically identified. This is genuinely dramatic, not merely an incremental adjustment, because it inverts the entire real legal logic governing what local authorities can do - moving from "everything is forbidden unless specifically authorized" to "everything is allowed unless specifically forbidden" is a real, structural reversal of the default position, not simply an expansion of a fixed list of permitted local-authority activities. ANSWER: This is a genuinely dramatic change because it inverts the real underlying legal default rather than just expanding a list - under ultra vires, local authorities could do only what was specifically authorized; under the Localism Act 2011's real "power to do anything that individuals generally may do," authorities are instead presumed to have broad freedom similar to an ordinary individual's, with restrictions becoming the exception rather than permission being the exception. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ This explains the specific structural inversion (default-forbidden to default-permitted) using the chapter's own real quoted language, rather than simply asserting the change was "significant" without explaining the actual shift in legal logic.