Cornwall Council

Elected county councils were established in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, taking over administrative functions previously carried out by unelected magistrates at the quarter sessions. The first elections to the county council were held in January 1889 and it formally came into being on 1 April 1889, on which day it held its first formal meeting at the Municipal Buildings in Truro. The first chairman of the council was William Edgcumbe, 4th Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, a Conservative peer.^[4][5]

Until 1974 the lower tier of local government comprised numerous boroughs, urban districts and rural districts. In 1974 the lower tier of local government was reorganised and Cornwall was left with six districts: Caradon, Carrick, Kerrier, North Cornwall, Penwith, and Restormel.^[6]

On 1 April 2009, the six districts were abolished as part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England and their functions taken over by the county council, which was renamed 'Cornwall Council'.^[7][8]

The campaign for Cornish devolution began in 2000 with the founding of the Cornish Constitutional Convention, a cross-party, cross-sector association that campaigns for devolution to Cornwall.^[9] In 2009 the Liberal Democrat MP Dan Rogerson introduced a bill in parliament seeking to take power from Whitehall and regional quangos and pass it to Cornwall Council, with the intention of making the council an assembly similar to the National Assembly for Wales.^[10] In November 2010 the Prime Minister, David Cameron, suggested in comments to the local press that his government would "devolve a lot of power to Cornwall – that will go to the Cornish unitary authority."^[11] In 2011, the then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he would meet a cross party group, including the six Cornish MPs, to look at whether more powers could be devolved to Cornwall.^[12]

Some powers were eventually devolved from the government to Cornwall Council in 2015, relating to matters including bus franchising, education and apprenticeships, renewable energy and energy efficiency and integration of health and social care services.^[13][14] Further devolved powers were agreed in November 2023, including in relation to adult education and Cornish distinctiveness and promotion of the Cornish language.^[15]

Since 2009, Cornwall Council has provided both county-level and district-level services. The whole county is also divided into civil parishes, which form a second tier of local government.^[16]

The council was under Conservative majority control from the 2021 election until July 2024.^[3]

Political control of the council since the 1974 reforms has been as follows:^[17][18]

Non-metropolitan county

Unitary authority

The leaders of the council since 2005 have been:^[19]

Following the 2021 election and subsequent by-elections and changes of allegiance up to July 2024, the composition of the council was:

Mebyon Kernow and the Green councillor sit together as a group. Of the independent councillors, 15 form the "Independent Group", another four do not belong to a group and there is one 'Independent Conservative Aligned'.^[21][3] The next election is due in 2025.

Since the last boundary changes in 2021 the county has been divided into 87 electoral divisions, each electing one councillor. Elections are held every four years.^[22][23]

The council has its headquarters at Lys Kernow, also known as New County Hall, on Treyew Road in Truro. It was purpose-built for the council and opened in 1966.^[24]

The quarter sessions which preceded the county council had generally met at the Shire Hall in Bodmin. From its first meeting in 1889 the county council chose instead to meet in Truro, where it initially met at the Municipal Buildings (later called City Hall, now the Hall for Cornwall). In 1912 the council moved to a new building at County Hall on Station Road in Truro, which served as the council's headquarters until 1966.^[25][26][27]

Among the services provided by the council is a public library service which consists of a main library in Truro and smaller libraries in towns and some villages throughout Cornwall. There are also the following special libraries: Cornwall Learning Library, Cornish Studies Library, the Education Library Service, and the Performing Arts Library, as well as a mobile library service based at Threemilestone.^[28]

Cornwall Council is promoting ten cultural projects as part of a five-year culture strategy. One project is the development of a National Theatre of Cornwall, a collaboration of the Hall for Cornwall, Kneehigh Theatre, Eden Project and Wildworks. Cornwall Council has based its idea on the successful National Theatres of Scotland and Wales.^[29]

Another of the projects is the proposed creation of a National Library of Cornwall to resolve inadequacies with the current storage of archives.^[30] It is hoped that this will bring some important documents concerning Cornish history back to Cornwall as well as providing better public access to those records already held. Cornwall Council is also involved in the project to build a Stadium for Cornwall.

Cornwall Council backs the campaign for the Cornish to be recognised as a National Minority in the UK. The council's then chief executive Kevin Lavery wrote a letter to the Government in 2010, writing, "Cornwall Council firmly believes that the UK Government should recognise the Cornish as a national minority under the terms of the Framework Convention." Adding that, "Cornwall Council believes that the Government's current restricted interpretation is discriminatory against the Cornish and contradicts the support it gives to Cornish culture and identity through its own departments."^[31] Cornwall Council's support was officially reaffirmed as council policy in 2011 with the publication of the Cornish National Minority Report 2, signed and endorsed by the then leaders of every political grouping on the council.^[32] The council took an active role in the promotion of the options for registering Cornish ethnicity and national identity on the 2011 UK Census.^[33] The Cornish people were finally recognised as a National Minority by the British Government on 24 April 2014 and incorporated into the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities giving the Cornish the same status as the United Kingdom's other Celtic peoples, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.^[34]

Since 2008 Cornwall Council and the former county council, together with Cornwall Enterprise, and Cornwall Sustainable Energy Partnership, have been involved with a Protocol of Cooperation between Cornwall and the Conseil général du Finistère in Brittany. The protocol aims to allow the two regions to work more closely on topics of common interest and engage in a knowledge exchange with the possibility of jointly applying for European funding.^[35] Cornwall is also a member of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, a partnership of European regions, which aims to promote and highlight the value of these regions to Europe. Cornwall comes under the Atlantic Arc Commission sub-division of 30 regions, which has been used to advertise the potential of renewable energy off the Cornish coast to Europe.^[36][37]

A scheme arising from these partnerships is MERiFIC (Marine Energy in Far Peripheral and Island Communities) which seeks to advance the adoption of marine energy across the two regions, including the Isles of Scilly.^[38] The project has received £4 million of European funding that will be spent in Cornwall and Brittany.^[39]

Cornwall County Council organised an event in Brussels in 2008 to promote various aspects of Cornwall, including the Cornish language, food and drink and showcasing Cornwall's design industry. This was part of the Celtic Connections programme of events put together by the Celtic nations as a showcase for culture in Europe.^[40]

Various fact finding missions have been organised by councillors to study how other regions and small nations of Europe govern themselves successfully. Independent councillor, Bert Biscoe, organised a fact finding mission to Guernsey in 2011 to see if the island's system of government could be adapted to work in Cornwall.^[41]

Since 2010 Cornwall Council has been a full observer member of the British–Irish Council due to the Cornish language falling under the BIC's areas of work.^[42]

Cornwall Council, in partnership with the Eden Project, is bidding to have the world's first Green Investment Bank based in Cornwall. The council is also working with the NHS and Eden to tackle fuel poverty by creating a Cornwall Together co-op which will buy electricity at lower-than-market prices.^[43] No further progress has been made on this since it was originally proposed.

Cornwall Council are servicing nearly 30 long term lender option borrower option loans (LOBOs) totalling £394 million. The council is locked into some of the deals until the year 2078, paying interest at more than double the current market rate.^[44]

• Dick Cole, leader of Mebyon Kernow and member for St Dennis and St Enoder^[45]
• Loveday Jenkin, deputy leader of Mebyon Kernow and member for Crowan, Sithney and Wendron

• Council of the Isles of Scilly
• Cornish Nationalism

• Official website