They often included street paving, cleansing, lighting, providing watchmen or dealing with various public nuisances.
Older urban government forms included the corporations of ancient boroughs, vestries of parishes, and in some cases the lord of the manor.
[6] Jones and Falkus give the number of such bodies created:[7] Improvement Acts empowered the commissioners to fund their work by levying rates.
Other commissions held elections at which all ratepayers could vote, or took all those paying above a certain rate as automatic members.
There were thirty towns across England and Wales where the improvement commissioners were still the primary form of local government, acting as the urban sanitary authority.