Public Affairs Test - County and District Councils.

Local governments are generally formed as a two-tiered system. In Winchester, for example, The top tier is Hampshire county council . With a budget of about £1.8 billion, they are in charge of road maintenance, and the emergency services as well as services such as libraries, education, social care. The bottom tier (the District council) Winchester city council,  have a much smaller budget of £12.5 million and they look after things more closely related to their district. These include traffic control, some elements of waste disposal, control of council housing and other community and leisure activities and facilities.

The exception to this rule of the two-tiered system are Unitary authorities. This is when there is a single authority that is in charge of all the things that are usually separated between the district and county councils. There are 55 UA’s in the UK, and they are usually formed for places which may be too large for the two-tiered system. One example for this would be Southampton.

Councillors for both District and County councils are supposed to represent the people in the areas they preside over. Indeed, county councillors are elected by a group of their peers every four years, this does not mean that the actual people change particularly often as, in general, the majority of the public do not care about council proceedings unless they are affected directly. Although the cabinet can be liable to change as a result of a general election. This is because cabinet members for the county council are chosen from the largest political party of the area, and from them, a cabinet leader is chosen. So if political attitudes were to change drastically, an entire cabinet would have to be re-elected.

Councillors for district councils are elected from their wards, for which they are responsible. This usually means addressing problems that come up in those wards and bringing them to the attention of the District council.  During a ‘safer neighbourhood’ meeting for Winchester, the issues raised were relevant only to Winchester, and generally, each came from a councillor’s own ward. Though the police were also present and talked about general crime over the entire city.

County councillors on the other hand, do not tend to concentrate on specific areas, instead, they look at broader issues affecting their county as a whole. During a County council meeting which I attended, some of the issues addressed included: Deciding on how to change the way in which adult social care is paid; how to implement a broadband scheme for all of Hampshire; and a short discussion about public transport, bus routes etc. Each of these has a fairly broad target area as opposed to even a specific town or city.

To conclude. Both types of council do essentially the same thing, in helping their particular areas, but county councils are able to do much more as they have much larger budgets and are therefore able to do more for their area than a district council can as they have much less influence respective to their counterparts.

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