About Your Council
The Local Government Act 2000 required councils to adopt new political management structures and to move away from the traditional committee style of decision-making, where all councillors had a formal decision making role, to one of four executive models. Following the receipt of a petition to hold a referendum on the style of executive model to be adopted, a local referendum was held in May 2002, which resulted in the Elected Mayor and Cabinet style of Executive arrangements being implemented in the Authority from October 2002.
The Council has agreed a Constitution which sets out how it operates how decisions are made and what procedures are followed, this ensures that these decisions are efficient, transparent and able identify who decision takers are. The Council is made up of an elected Executive Mayor and 36 Councillors who represent the interests and views of their communities and help form the Council's objectives and policies. Councillors and the Executive Mayor are elected every four years with the last elections being held in May 2011. The Executive Mayor is democratically accountable to all residents of the district and councillors are democratically accountable to residents in their ward. The Mayor and Councillors have a duty to the whole community, with a special duty to their constituents including those who did not vote for them. Each ward is represented by one Councillor. Use the link opposite to obtain details of your ward councillors.The Council conducts its business through a variety of meetings that are in general open to the public depending on the matters to be considered at the meeting. You can register to receive email alerts for agendas containing topics which are of interest to you using our online alerting system for agendas and minutes. You can also search and view agendas for forthcoming meetings with our online meetings database.