Please find below a letter from Mark Boleat in response to the following two letters: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/15/private-elites-cling-to-privileges

Editor

Readers of the Guardian may be confused by the use of the word “corporation” in various recent letters: the City of London is not a ‘corporation’ in a business sense but an entity created under an ancient agreement to fulfil certain purposes. In modern terms our job is to support the global business centre called ‘the City’ whose heart is the ‘Square Mile’ district around St Paul’s, for which we are the local authority. Our job is also to support many services for Londoners (including the Barbican arts centre, the Museum of London, Guildhall Library, London Metropolitan Archives, Hampstead Heath and Epping Forest, the wholesale food markets, etc.) and to foster skills and opportunities for wider London – including through three new inner-London academies and many London-wide projects, often backed by our charity, the City Bridge Trust.

The City Corporation is led by elected committees which meet in public every month or so. Information about all of this, including the work of our parliamentary law officer called the ‘Remembrancer’ (who liaises on legislative matters with Westminster) is on our very extensive website.

Of course the Square Mile is unique in the UK allowing a ‘worker vote’, as determined by the 2002 Act, but the elected City of London Corporation remains a modern, open and useful entity at the service of a thriving London and the wider country.

Mark Boleat

Policy Chairman of the City of London Corporation.