County and District councils

In England there is a two-tier form of local council, this form of council will cover district; there are a total of 362 districts in the UK. The two-tiers of council will be the County Council and the District Council.  Using Winchester as an example of the two-tier system, the district is governed by Winchester city council (District council) and Hampshire county council (County council).

There are also single-tier districts in the UK, in which the duties of the county and district council are performed by one authority. These are known and unitary authorities; there are 55 of these districts in the UK. This type of council is present in counties where it would not be practical to split the area into districts, for example Cornwall, and in large districts, for example Southampton.

The county council controls civil services throughout the county, these include: social services, highways, fire and rescue services, waste disposal and country planning. The councilors deal with issues that affect the entire region that it governs, and the budget it controls reflects this, for example Hampshire county council has a budget of £1.8 billion. This is the main difference between the two tiers of council; the county council has a much larger budget and deals with issues covering a much larger area. 

A district council, in Winchester’s case Winchester city council, governs a much smaller area, in this case the wards inside and around Winchester. The city council has control over smaller issues such as traffic, council housing and community issues. A city council is more concerned with issues that have an effect on the ward that they govern which is why its budget is so much smaller than the county councils’, Winchester city council has a total budget of £12.5 million.

To show the difference in the scale of the two councils I will use examples from meeting that I have attended. The county council had county wide issues on their agenda, for example how to implement faster broadband to people living throughout the county and how the way in which adult social care should be paid for. There are all large issues which do not just affect people within a ward or a city, but a county.

Whereas when I attended a safer neighborhoods meeting which included members of the city council, the issues that were being discussed included people speeding, noise complaints and theft in the high street. These are all much smaller issues which come directly from the councilors ward and therefore will only affect a small number of people within the city.

In conclusion the main difference between a county and district council is size and power, each council performs the same task which is dealing with the issues of the people in represents, but a county council does it on a much larger scale, and has the resources and budget to do so; whereas a district council focuses on a much smaller area and has the resources to match this.