Wiltshire Council

Wiltshire Council, known between 1889 and 2009 as Wiltshire County Council, is the local authority which governs the non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire in South West England. Since 2009 it has been a unitary authority, having taken over district-level functions when the county's districts were abolished. The non-metropolitan county of Wiltshire is smaller than the ceremonial county of the same name, the latter additionally including Swindon. Wiltshire Council has been controlled by the Conservative Party since 2000, and has its headquarters at County Hall in Trowbridge.

History
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 new county council were held on 23 January 1889; the council had sixty seats, but in twenty-eight the candidate ran unopposed. The first provisional meeting of the council was held at Devizes on 31 January 1889. The council formally came into its powers on 1 April 1889, on which day it held its first official meeting at Salisbury Guildhall. The first chairman was John Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath.

The council was granted a coat of arms in 1937.

Until 1974 the lower tier of local government comprised numerous boroughs, urban districts and rural districts. In 1974 the lower tier was reorganised and Wiltshire was left with five districts: Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, Thamesdown and West Wiltshire. In 1997, Thamesdown was renamed 'Swindon' and converted into a unitary authority, removing it from the non-metropolitan county (the area controlled by Wiltshire County Council). This reduced the population of the non-metropolitan county by almost a third. Swindon remains part of the wider ceremonial county of Wiltshire.

As part of the 2009 structural changes to local government, Wiltshire's four remaining districts were abolished. Their functions were taken over by Wiltshire County Council as from 1 April 2009, at which point the county council renamed itself Wiltshire Council.

Governance
Since 2009, Wiltshire Council has provided both county-level and district-level services. The whole county is also covered by civil parishes, which form a lower tier of local government.

Most executive decisions are taken by the authority's cabinet, each member of which has a particular area of responsibility. Development control is undertaken by five planning committees, the powers of which cannot be exercised by the cabinet. Members of the authority are appointed to a wide range of outside bodies, providing them with some element of democratic accountability, such as the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, the Wiltshire Victoria County History, and the Wiltshire Historic Buildings Trust.

Political control
The county council has been under Conservative majority control since 2000.

Political control of the council since the 1974 reforms has been as follows:

Upper-tier authority

Unitary authority

Leadership
The leaders of the council since 1998 have been:

Composition
Following the 2021 election, by-elections in November 2022 and February 2024, as well as a change of allegiance in April 2023, the composition of the council was: The next election is due in 2025.

Elections
Since the last full review of boundaries in 2021 the county has been divided into 98 electoral divisions, each electing one councillor. Elections are held every four years.

Premises
The council is based at County Hall, Trowbridge, which was purpose-built for the council and was completed in 1940. It also has offices in Chippenham, Devizes and Salisbury.

At the council's first official meeting in 1889 there was a debate about where the council should meet in future. The quarter sessions which preceded the county council had met in rotation at Devizes, Marlborough, Salisbury and Warminster, and some advocated that the council should similarly travel around. Others made the case that the rapidly growing town of Swindon should be one of the meeting places. It was decided that Trowbridge should be the meeting place; although not central to the county geographically, it had the best railway connections to other parts of the county, and there was also a large new Town Hall already under construction there which could serve as a meeting place.

As it happened, the council did continue to hold meetings in other towns for the first few years, but gradually consolidated its offices and meeting place in Trowbridge. In 1896, the council acquired Arlington House at 72 Fore Street in Trowbridge to act as its offices. The building was extended in 1900 to include a dedicated council chamber, and was extended again in 1913.

In 1930, the council decided to build a new county hall in Devizes, which is nearer the geographical centre of Wiltshire, but construction was delayed and in 1933 the decision was reversed. Instead a new County Hall was subsequently built on the former Trowbridge Town Football Club site on Bythesea Road in Trowbridge. The new building opened in 1940.

In 2012 County Hall was renovated and expanded at a cost of about £24 million. Services provided to the public in the building include the Trowbridge library, and the main office of the council's Registration Service.