County Council vs District Council

County Council vs District Council

Local government in Britain is divided into tiers. The highest tier belongs to county council which is occasionally divided into districts or boroughs (as is the case with Hampshire county council) and the second tier is district council, these can be ‘unitary authorities’. District councils are then separated into parishes. We attended a Winchester County Council meeting and the themes that were discussed here were entirely regarding Winchester. The articles discussed included Broadband speeds and changes to the local care system.

Hampshire
Hampshire county council is the upper tier in local government in Hampshire, below it are Basi ngstoke and Deane Borough Council, East Hampshire District Council, Eastleigh Borough Council, Fareham Borough Council, Gosport Borough Council, Hart District Council, Havant Borough Council, New Forest District Council, Rushmoor Borough Council, Test Valley Borough Council and Winchester City Council. Portsmouth and Southampton are both part of Hampshire, however they are both unitary authorities,; they are their own council. We spoke to Kelsey Lerney, head of Winchester City Council about the relationship between the city and the county council and she admitted that occasionally there are disagreements between the two councils, with the county council being Conservative run, and the city council having a small Liberal Democrat majority. Parishes in Winchester include Winnal, Badger Farm, Hambledon and Bishops Sutton.

What do they do?
County councils tend to be responsible for services such as education, transport, emergency services, libraries and waste disposal, district councils are more likely to be responsible for areas such as housing, waste collection, licensing, cemeteries and planning permissions. Parish Councils are responsible for feeding back local opinion to higher tiers of government, setting up CCTV and other crime reduction methods and maintaining footpaths and green spaces.

Elections
County councillors are elected every four years, these are voted for in the same way as government elections, anybody is able to stand as a councillor as long as they are 18 or older on the day of nomination, have property in or work connections in the county, are a UK or European Union citizen, have not been declared bankrupt or otherwise disqualified and are not already an employee of the Council. Elections are conducted in a first past the post system. In local government councillors are normally elected every four years. Elected councillors usually employ ‘officers’ who take charge of necessary tasks and engagements.

Finance
Councils are funded by council tax and government grants, county councils receive a lot more finance than district or parish councils as Winchester City Council leader Kelsey Lerney informed us. The county council have an overall yearly budget of somewhere near 1.8 billion pounds whereas the district council has only 12.5 million pounds.