AbstractThis paper presents data from an ethnographic study of local authorities' implemention of the homeless persons legislation. By focusing in detail on the mechanics of administrative decisionmaking, the paper suggests that analyses of the Act dwelling exclusively on statutory provisions and interpretative case law provide a misleading picture of both the conduct and outcome of the bureaucratic. Rather than structuring their behaviour in accordance with abstract legal principle, local authority officers apparently make decisions in response to various contextual political and organisational factors rarely alluded to in traditional legal critiques of Part III decisionmaking. The paper concludes by suggesting that the mismatch between academic/ judicial analysis and administrative reality is sufficiently wide to call into question the utility of efforts to place legal controls on political organisations without first having gained a clear understanding of the non-legal pressures which exert influence on that organisation's administrative behaviour.