England has been divided into counties. And each county is subdivided into districts.
composed by a number of Councilors elected by the inhabitants. The preciding officer of a county or a district is called a chairman. if a district is a city he is called a mayor or a Lord Mayor. - is the first citizen pf his town.
The pattern of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to the local arrangements.
Legislation concerning local government in England is decided by the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom, because England does not have a devolved parliament or regional assemblies, outside Greater London.
Local government in Scotland is organised through 32 unitary authorities[1] designated as Councils[2] which consist of councillorselected every four years by registered voters in each of the council areas.
Councils receive the majority of their funding from the Scottish Government,[3] through Aggregate External Finance (AEF). AEF consists of three parts: Revenue Support Grants, Non-Domestic Rates, and Income and Specific Grants.[4] The level of central government support for each authority is determined by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, currently John Swinney MSP, and is distributed by the Finance and Central Services Department of the Scottish Government. Councils obtain additional income through the Council Tax, that the council itself sets.
Scottish councils co-operate through, and are represented collectively by, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).
Northern Ireland is divided into 11 districts for local government purposes. In Northern Ireland local councils do not carry out the same range of functions as those in the rest of the United Kingdom, for example they have no responsibility for education, road building or housing (though they do nominate members to the advisory Northern Ireland Housing Council). Their functions include waste and recycling services, leisure and community services, building control and local economic and cultural development. They are not planning authorities, but are consulted on some planning applications. The collection of rates is handled by the Land and Property Services agency. For local government purposes, Wales has since 1 April 1996 been divided into 22 single-tier principal areas.[1] The elected councils of these areas are responsible for the provision of all local government services, including education, social work, environmental protection, and most highways. Below these there are also (in most, but not all, parts of the principal areas) elected community councils to which responsibility for specific aspects of the application of local policy may be devolved.
The principal areas are variously styled as county, county borough, city or city and county, although this is a distinction not always respected in the media, including the BBC, which refers to all 22 areas simply as counties.[2][3]
The Queen appoints a Lord Lieutenant to represent her in each of the eight preserved counties of Wales, which are combinations of principal areas retained for ceremonial purposes.
Subdivisions of Wales created for such purposes as the provision of police and emergency services and the organization of the National Health Service are made up of combinations of principal areas. The Dyfed-Powys Police force, for example, operates in the area covered by the principal areas of Powys, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, and Carmarthenshire – the latter three constituting the preserved county ofDyfed.
In April 2013, it was announced that a major review was to be undertaken into local government organisation in Wales, with a Commission on Public Service Governance and Delivery to be chaired by Sir Paul Williams. The Commission's report was published in January 2014, and recommended a reduction in the number of principal area councils to between 10 and 12.
