Local government in England provides a range of public services and is structured primarily through either a one-tier or two-tier system.

The one-tier system consists of a single council responsible for all local services, known as a unitary authority. The two-tier system divides responsibilities between a larger county council and several smaller district councils.

The structure of local government has been subject to continuous reform, with a notable trend in recent years towards creating more unitary authorities from former two-tier areas. Alongside these council structures, specific powers have been devolved to groups of local authorities operating as combined authorities, often led by a directly elected “metro mayor.”

In total, there are 317 local authorities in England made up of five different types: county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, and London boroughs.

Elections to councils are held on the first Thursday in May.

The tiers and types of local government

Two-tier local government

In a two-tier system, functions are split between two levels of council (county and district). The upper-tier county council covers a large area and provides services with a wide scope. These responsibilities include education, transport planning, highways, social care, libraries, and waste disposal.

Each county is subdivided into several smaller district councils, which may also be styled as borough or city councils. These lower-tier councils handle more local services, including housing, waste collection, environmental health, leisure facilities, and processing planning applications.

Unitary authorities

Many large towns and cities and some small counties are unitary authorities; i.e. they have only one tier of local government. Unitary authorities can be city councils, borough councils, county councils, or district councils.

In a one-tier system, a single unitary authority is responsible for all local government functions in its area. This combines the responsibilities of both county and district councils. Many large towns and cities, as well as some entire counties that have been reorganised, operate under this model.

Metropolitan districts

Metropolitan districts are a specific type of unitary authority established in six major urban areas in England. They are often referred to as metropolitan borough or city councils and are responsible for the full range of local services in their area.

London boroughs and the Greater London Authority

Each of the 32 London boroughs is a unitary authority. However, they share strategic responsibilities with the London-wide Greater London Authority (GLA), which is headed by the mayor of London. The GLA’s responsibilities include major transport, policing and strategic development planning for the entire capital.

Parish and town councils

In many parts of England, a third tier of local government exists in the form of parish or town councils. There are approximately 9,000 town or parish councils in England. These bodies operate at a hyper-local level and are responsible for services such as managing parks, allotments, and community centres.

Combined authorities and mayoralties

Combined authorities were first created in 2011 under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. They are formed when two or more English councils pool responsibility for strategic functions such as transport, economic development and skills.

Many combined authorities are led by a directly elected metro mayor and hold further powers under devolution deals, for example over housing or health in Greater Manchester. Under the government’s English devolution reforms, they are being reframed as “strategic authorities”.

Police and crime commissioners

Under the police and crime commissioners (PCCs) system, a range of directly elected officials took responsibility for securing an efficient and effective police force for their area. In some areas, the PCC took on responsibility for the governance of fire and rescue services, becoming a police, fire and crime commissioner (PFCC).

In November 2025, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced that the government would be scrapping the position of PCC. The government stated that removing PCCs would “cut the cost of unnecessary bureaucracy, money that can be better spent on restoring neighbourhood policing”.

The history of local government structure

Local government in England has been the subject of a constant re-structuring process over several centuries and continues to be so.

Although various forms of local government existed in Saxon and Medieval times, the kind of local government in existence today really began to evolve in the 19th century. The Local Government Act 1888 provided for the creation of 66 county councils and a London County Council. These county councils were to be run by elected councillors and comprise a chairman, aldermen and councillors.

The act transferred from the Quarter Sessions (local courts) to the county councils the administrative and financial business of their counties. This included maintenance of roads, bridges and county buildings, assessment and levying of rates, appointment, dismissal and setting of salaries of county officers and the organisation of parliamentary elections. The act also allowed county boroughs to be created: large boroughs with a population in excess of 50,000 could become an administrative county.

The Local Government Act 1894 provided for elected parish councils to be established in rural areas and for the creation of urban district councils and rural district councils with elected councillors. Much of the legislation of the 1888 and 1894 Acts was subsequently consolidated under the Local Government Act of 1933.

London saw a major structural change to local government in the 1960s. The County of London and the London County Council were abolished and the new area of Greater London was created from the County of London and sections of other surrounding counties. The Greater London Council (GLC) became the local government administrative body for this area together with the 32 newly created London boroughs.

By the latter half of the 20th century local government in England had developed into an intensely complex system in desperate need of simplification and reform. Consequently a radical overhaul was undertaken with plans for a simple country-wide two tier system outlined in the Local Government Act 1972.

Under these changes, which came into effect in April 1974, all existing local government areas, with the exception of Greater London and the Isles of Scilly, were abolished; that included all administrative counties, county boroughs, urban districts, rural districts, urban parishes and municipal boroughs. In their place new metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties were created and these counties were in turn divided into districts. Each county was administered by a county council and each district by a district council.

In 1986, changes were made once again to London local government. The Greater London Council was abolished together with the six metropolitan counties, effectively leaving the London boroughs as single tier administrations. Then in 2000 the Greater London Authority was created to provide a directly elected strategic administration for the whole of Greater London. The GLA shares responsibility for some local government services with the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation.

In the rest of the country, despite hopes that the radical reforms of 1974 had at last created a simple, uniform system of local government, less than 20 years later these reforms were being questioned and yet again further changes were called for. A review carried out by the Local Government Commission for England, established in 1992, recommended that some counties should retain their two-tier structure, but that others should change to one-tier unitary authorities (UAs). Subsequently several UAs were created in 25 counties between 1995 and 1998.

The Local Government Act 2000 set out the governance models that must be operated by local authorities. These are: a mayor and cabinet executive, a leader and cabinet executive, and the committee system (or other arrangements approved by the secretary of state).

In 2009, further local government re-organisation saw 10 new unitary authorities created; however, following the election of the coalition government in May 2010, plans to create two new Unitary Authorities in Exeter and Suffolk were revoked by parliament in 2011.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the Local Government Act 2010 which revoked the orders that created unitary councils for the cities of Exeter and Norwich – a move which was strongly criticised by the Labour opposition. The act also prevents the implementation of further unitary proposals.

The coalition government vowed to promote decentralisation, saying it believed that the central government had become “too big, too interfering, too controlling and too bureaucratic.” The Localism Act passed in November 2011 contains a number of measures designed to strengthen the role of local government.

Reforms to local government since 2016

The Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 provides an expedited procedure for creating unitary authorities alongside a ‘devolution deal’, if this was desired locally.

A significant acceleration of this trend took place between 2019 and 2023. As part of the government’s “levelling up” agenda, a series of reorganisations abolished the two-tier structure in several counties, including Northamptonshire (2021), Cumbria (2023), North Yorkshire (2023), and Somerset (2023). In each case, the existing county and district councils were replaced by one or more new unitary authorities.

The 2022 levelling up white paper proposed a “devolution revolution”, offering every part of England the opportunity to have a mayor.

The white paper stated: “By 2030, every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal with powers at or approaching the highest level of devolution and a simplified, long-term funding settlement.”

On 2 February 2022, Gove delivered a statement to the House of Commons, marking the publication of the white paper. He described the government’s objective as enabling “overlooked and undervalued communities to take back control of their destiny.”

Speaking on the Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast in December 2025, Gove reflected on the levelling up agenda’s apparent failure, attributing it to institutional scepticism across Whitehall.

Gove said: “The original impetus behind coming up, of course, came from Boris, and the white paper was… I thought a very effective way of giving effect to what he’d been talking about in very high level terms.

“But folk in the treasury were skeptical about what we were doing. They thought that this was just old-fashioned regional policy in new clothes. And other government departments didn’t like the idea in particular of devolving areas.”

Gove noted that the Department for Education opposed devolving elements of the skills budget to local areas, while the Department for Work and Pensions objected to devolving responsibility for employment support.

He added: “And as I say, Treasury ministers overall in particular thought that we were attempting to push water uphill. And that if you really wanted to promote growth, then making a particular emphasis on left-behind areas was a very long-haul exercise that would not generate the rapid growth the country needed.”

The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, introduced in July 2025, proposes a new framework for devolution of powers to local government and combined authorities in England.

Under government plans, the terms “strategic authority”, “mayoral strategic authority” and “established mayoral strategic authority” will replace “mayoral combined authorities”.

North East England devolution referendum

The North East England devolution referendum, held on 4 November 2004, saw voters reject the Labour government’s plan to establish an elected regional assembly with limited political powers devolved from the UK parliament. The defeat effectively marked the end of the Blair government’s policy to extend regional devolution across England.

The 2004 vote was the only one of the three planned Northern England referendums to take place, following the indefinite postponement of the votes in North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber on 22 July 2004.

The other referendums were postponed due to concerns over the security and procedural regularity of all-postal ballots; however, the vote in the North East was allowed to proceed, partly because the region was considered Labour’s strongest electoral area and was assumed to hold the most support for the proposal.

The proposed assemblies followed the model established by the London Assembly (endorsed by a referendum in 1998).

The 2004 result, however, delivered a stunning rebuff to the government.

Voters rejected the proposed assembly by 77.9% to 22.1%, on a turnout of 48%. Every council area in the region returned a majority for the ‘no’ campaign.

The ‘Yes’ campaign, Yes4theNorthEast, was defeated despite the support of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and Labour’s strength in the region (which included Blair’s Sedgefield seat). The Sedgefield district rejected the plan by 61.7% to 38.3%.

Yes4theNorthEast also cited the endorsement of local celebrities, including Paul Gascoigne. “We need a strong voice for the northeast”, Gazza said. “We want to keep our kids in Newcastle so they don’t have to go to London for jobs. It’s about giving our kids a chance.”

It may have been an attempt to mimic Sean Connery’s support for a Scottish parliament in the 1997 referendum campaign.

Speaking after the result was declared, Prescott conceded that the devolution cause had suffered an “emphatic” defeat.

At a press conference in Sunderland, the deputy PM responded: “I might be disappointed. It is an emphatic defeat for the possibility of an elected regional assembly. The North-east public have answered in an emphatic way. I am a democrat and I accept that.

“I was surprised by the clear majority and I think there was a number of reasons for that – and claims of more politicians and greater council tax has an effect.

“It was an overwhelming defeat for the proposal put before the North-east public. As a government we believe in letting the people have their say.”

The successful ‘No’ campaign, North East Says No (Nesno), was led by local businessman John Elliott. Its strategic direction, however, was heavily influenced by Dominic Cummings, who served as Nesno’s campaign director.

Nesno questioned the cost, power and necessity of the proposed institution. Its core arguments centred on the fact that the assembly would have limited real powers, arguing that it would be an expensive “white elephant” and disproportionately centralised around Newcastle upon Tyne.

Nesno even commissioned a huge white elephant, which was then toured around the North East during the campaign.

Cummings, the County Durham native and sometimes sightseer, coined the Nesno campaign slogan: “Politicians talk, we pay.”

This phrase, emblazoned across fake £50 notes, formed the centrepiece of a Nesno political broadcast.

The advert stated: “The regional assembly would create more politicians, so as you would expect it means the regional assembly will come with huge extra cost. The bill for the north-east would be a staggering £1 million per week.”

Notably, the ‘No’ campaign argued that the cash required to run the political institutions should instead be redirected to frontline public services, such as the National Health Service.

This message was in effect copy and pasted onto the side of a certain red bus, which toured the country during the 2016 Brexit referendum. “We send the EU £350 million a week, let’s fund our NHS instead”, the bus advised voters.

Cummings himself later described the 2004 victory as starting “60-40 behind with no money, no digital campaign, no ground campaign, every force in the North East hostile, and with the campaign consisting of not much more than my girlfriend, dad, uncle and literally a handful of people. I think we spent ~£50-100k. We won 80-20.”

Cummings wrote: “These guys didn’t learn from the 2004 referendum before 2016 and even now very few seem to realise that a ‘second referendum’ would, given minimal competence from ‘Leave’, be a mega-repeat of 2004 in which ‘the EU’ would not even be the main issue.”

He added: “[The 2004 campaign] was a training exercise that turned out surprisingly well.”

Nesno’s chief spokesperson, Graham Robb, described the operation as “Britain’s first populist campaign”.

Statistics

• Following the 2019-2023 reorganisations, there were 317 local authorities in England.
• This total comprises 21 county councils, 164 district councils, and 132 single-tier authorities (65 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan boroughs, and 32 London boroughs).
• According to the Local Government Association, local government in England employs approximately 1.2 million people.

Local government in the devolved nations

Scotland operates a single-tier system with 32 unitary authorities, known as councils. These are responsible for all local government services. Local elections use the single transferable vote (STV) system.

Wales also has a single-tier system, composed of 22 unitary authorities (county and county borough councils). Both Scotland and Wales have community councils, which are broadly equivalent to English parish councils.

Northern Ireland is divided into 11 district councils. These have more limited functions than their counterparts in Great Britain, with responsibility for services such as waste collection, leisure and local planning. Major services like education, roads, and social care are delivered by province-wide bodies.

Local authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland are elected using the single transferable vote (STV) system, with multi-member wards.

Quotes

“It is by departments realising they should devolve downwards to a local level and by local government securing flexibility and finance in return for reform and results that we will do best. In our first term we had to set a new national framework, a national framework for stability, employment and public services and tax. […] I want people to see what we do together as a Labour commitment to the renaissance of local government in our country.” – Gordon Brown, then-chancellor of the exchequer, to Labour spring conference, February 2000.

“Localism, localism, localism […] The government is overseeing a fundamental shift of power away from Westminster to councils, communities and homes across the nation. A radical localist vision is turning Whitehall on its head by decentralising central government and giving power to the people.” – Department for Communities and Local Government, 2012

“We were elected on a promise of change, not just for a few areas cherry-picked by a Whitehall spreadsheet, but for the entire country. It was never going to be easy to deliver the growth our country desperately needed with the inheritance we were dumped with. But that’s why we are opting to devolve not dictate and delivering a Bill that will rebalance decade old divides and empower communities. We’re ushering in a new dawn of regional power and bringing decision making to a local level so that no single street or household is left behind and every community thrives from our plan for change.” – Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, July 2025

Additional resources

• The Local Government Association: https://www.local.gov.uk/
• UK Government – Understand how your council works: https://www.gov.uk/understand-how-your-council-works