Lancashire County Council

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 providing 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:^[6]

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.^[7]

The county council formally came into being on 1 April 1889 and held its first official meeting on 4 April 1889 at County Hall in Preston, the courthouse (completed 1882) which had served as the meeting place for the quarter sessions which preceded the county council. John Tomlinson Hibbert, a Liberal who had previously been the Member of Parliament for Oldham, was appointed the first chairman of the council.^[8]

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.^[9]

Lancashire County Council provides county-level services. District-level services are provided by the area's twelve district councils.^[10] Much of the county is also covered by civil parishes, which form a third tier of local government.^[11][12]

The county council has been under Conservative majority control since 2017.

Political control of the council since the 1974 reforms has been as follows:^[13]

The leaders of the council since 1974 have been:^[14]

Following the 2021 election and subsequent by-elections and changes of allegiance up to April 2024, the composition of the council was as follows:^[16][17][18]

The next election is due in 2025.

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.^[19]

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.

The council is based 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.^[20]

In July 2020, the county council announced that it wanted to replace itself and the 14 other councils that currently make up Lancashire's complex local government map with three standalone authorities. In September 2020 the county council submitted an outline plan to the government that outlines the proposed new unitary authorities and the areas they would cover. The new authorities would be, Central Lancashire (based on the footprints of Preston, Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire councils), North West Lancashire (Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre, Lancaster and Ribble Valley) and East Pennine Lancashire (Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Rossendale, Hyndburn and Pendle). These authorities would be governed by an elected mayor, with a combined authority. The major shake up to Lancashire's council structure is in a bid to gain more funding and power for the people of Lancashire.^[21][22]

Lancashire adopted the Public Libraries Act, 1919, in 1924. Library services were slow to develop as the average ratable value of the area outside the county boroughs and the other local authorities which had already adopted the act was relatively low. In 1938/39 the average expenditure on urban libraries per head was 1s. 9d., but that on county libraries was only 8 1/4d. (about two fifths of the former amount). Another disadvantage was that government of libraries was by a libraries sub-committee of the education committee of the council (the librarian having to report to the education officer who might not have been sympathetic to libraries). The central administration of the county library is at Preston where there are special services, special collections and staff to maintain a union catalogue.^[23]

"Biological heritage sites" are, according to Lancashire County Council, "'local wildlife sites' in Lancashire...(that) are identified using a set of published guidelines."^[24] The published guidelines dictate the necessary parameters in which a piece of land can be properly considered a "biological heritage site" by the "(Lancashire) County Council, Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside and Natural England."^[24][25]

• Richard Kay-Shuttleworth, 2nd Baron Shuttleworth (1937–1940), a fighter pilot killed in the Battle of Britain^[27]

• Lancashire County Council