This paper draws on data gathered during fieldwork conducted in 1986. It attempts to describe and explain the substantive and procedural nature of three local authorities’exercise of discretionary powers in the housing benefit scheme. Particular emphasis is placed on the extent to which administrative practices conform to legislative requirement, on the prescriptive influence of councillors over the administrative process and on the appellate role of the quasi‐judicial housing benefit review board. The paper suggests that an understanding of the dynamics of the administrative process can be found only through a dissection of each organizations’respective ‘administrative culture’, a multi‐faceted common‐sense rationale comprising political, moral, organizational and environmental factors which may be either mutually supportive or