Lancashire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Lancashire, England. It consists of 84 councillors. Since the 2017 election, the council has been under Conservative control. Prior to the 2009 Lancashire County Council election, the county had been under Labour control since 1989.
The leader of the council is Conservative councillor Phillippa Williamson, appointed in May 2021, chairing a cabinet of up to eight councillors. The Chief Executive and Director of Resources is Angie Ridgwell who was appointed in January 2018.
History
Elected county councils were created in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, taking over many administrative functions that had previously been performed by unelected magistrates at the quarter sessions. The areas covered by the new county councils were termed administrative counties. Several larger towns and cities were considered capable of their own county-level services and so they were excluded from the administrative county, becoming instead county boroughs. When the county council was established in 1889 there were 15 county boroughs in the wider geographic county of Lancashire:
Barrow-in-Furness
Blackburn
Bolton
Bootle
Burnley
Bury
Liverpool
Manchester
Oldham
Preston
Rochdale
St Helens
Salford
Stockport (part) Wigan
Three more towns were later elevated to become county boroughs: Warrington in 1900, Blackpool in 1904, and Southport in 1905.
The 1888 Act also placed each urban sanitary district which straddled county boundaries in one administrative county, and so Lancashire gained the parts of Ashton under Lyne, Stalybridge, and Warrington which had been in Cheshire, and the parts of Mossley which had been in Cheshire and Yorkshire. Lancashire ceded its part of Todmorden to the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Lancashire was reconstituted under the Local Government Act 1972 with some significant changes to its territory, notably ceding significant areas in the south to Greater Manchester and Merseyside and in the north to Cumbria, whilst gaining more modest areas from Yorkshire to the east. In 1998 Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool were both made unitary authorities, making them independent from the county council.
Governance
Lancashire County Council provides county-level services. District-level services are provided by the area's twelve district councils. Much of the county is also covered by civil parishes, which form a third tier of local government.
Political control
The county council has been under Conservative majority control since 2017.
Political control of the council since the 1974 reforms has been as follows:
Leadership
The leaders of the council since 1974 have been:
Composition
Following the 2021 election and by-elections up to October 2023 the composition of the council was as follows:
The next election is due in 2025.
Elections
Since the last boundary changes in 2017 the council has comprised 84 councillors representing 82 electoral divisions. Most divisions elect one councillor, but two divisions elect two councillors each. Elections are held every four years.
There are sixteen parliamentary constituencies in Lancashire. The Conservative Party holds 11, the Labour Party holds four, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, represents Chorley.
Premises
The council is base at County Hall on Fishergate in Preston. The original part of the building was a courthouse completed in 1882, which also served as the meeting place for the quarter sessions which preceded the county council. The building became the meeting place for the county council on its creation in 1889 and was significantly extended in 1903 and 1934 to provide additional office space.