Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Metropolitan Board of Works was the upper tier of local government for the area that later became Inner London, created by the Metropolis Management Act 1855 and formally operational from the 1st of January 1856. It replaced the Metropolitan Buildings Office and the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers and was responsible for planning and building infrastructure across the metropolis.
The Metropolitan Board of Works was abolished by the Local Government Act 1888 following a Royal Commission investigation into corruption scandals involving bribery, embezzlement, and unfair contract procurement. Its powers passed to the directly elected London County Council, which assumed full authority on the 21st of March 1889.
The Board built a sewerage system comprising 82 miles of main sewers and 1,100 miles of street sewers, under Chief Engineer Joseph Bazalgette. It also constructed Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Northumberland Avenue, rebuilt Putney, Battersea, Waterloo, and Hammersmith Bridges, funded the Thames Embankment from 1864, and acquired parks including Hampstead Heath and Finsbury Park.
Joseph Bazalgette served as Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works, having previously been engineer to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. He designed the core London sewerage system, the Thames Embankment, and drew up plans in 1878 for a bridge east of London Bridge estimated at 1.25 million pounds, a project that eventually became Tower Bridge.
The scandal centred on the Board's purchase of the Pavilion music hall at Piccadilly Circus in 1879 and the subsequent lease to music hall proprietor R. E. Villiers. Chief Valuer F. W. Goddard and Assistant Surveyor Thomas James Robertson accepted secret payments from Villiers and steered a ground rent of 3,000 pounds through the Board despite a higher competing offer of 4,000 pounds. When Villiers sold the Pavilion in December 1886, he paid Goddard a further 5,000 pounds.
The Board's 45 members were not directly elected but appointed by parish vestries, with larger vestries receiving two members and the City of London receiving three. It was accountable to Parliament but no specific ministry supervised its accounts, creating a democratic deficit that critics found troubling. All property owners paid for its work through local rates, yet had no direct vote over its decisions.