How your council works
Council structures, strategy, budgets and councillor roles.
A half day on how your council works: its history and types, the golden thread from vision to doorstep, partnership, council finance, the councillor's many roles and reading the political system.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 5 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Newly elected councillors in Wales and England, and the officers who support them
Overview
Newly elected councillors take on decisions that touch every resident. This first half of Your first days in office traces local government from the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 to the Localism Act 2011, then maps two tier, unitary, combined and parish arrangements and the main governance models, with Folkestone and Hythe as a case. It follows the golden thread from vision to doorstep, including the Best Value Duty, before turning to partnership and place and to council finance, from business rates to Woking's recovery after a section 114 notice, tested against Somerset Council. It ends with the councillor's roles, the Nolan Principles and Mendelow's power-interest matrix.
Aims
The overall aim is to give new councillors a clear, working picture of the council they now serve: how it is structured and funded, how promises become services, and how the political system around them operates, so that the first months feel less daunting and decisions rest on understanding rather than guesswork.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how your council is structured and governed, distinguishing two tier, unitary, combined and parish arrangements and the main governance models.
- Assess your council's financial resilience by reading revenue and capital budgets, the role of the section 151 officer and the lessons from Woking and Somerset.
- Use Mendelow's power-interest matrix and the Seven Principles of Public Life to read the political system and the many roles a councillor plays.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain the scale and breadth of what English councils deliver, using the four service categories of caring, educating and housing, shaping places and everyday essentials.
- Distinguish two tier, unitary, combined authority and parish arrangements and identify which council delivers a given service in each.
- Describe what a corporate plan contains and trace the five levels of the golden thread from vision to residents' lived experience.
- Explain the four drivers of partnership working: shared outcomes, complexity, cost and capacity, and legal duty.
- Describe the main sources of council income and distinguish what revenue and capital budgets should pay for.
- Describe the five foundations of local government and explain how they connect as one system.
- Describe the four dimensions of a councillor's role, representative, decision maker, community leader and case worker, and explain why they pull in different directions.
- Use Mendelow's power-interest matrix to map the stakeholders around a decision and decide who to brief first, and how.
Built from 8 modules.
5 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01What Local Government Is and How It Got HereFoundations of Local Government43 min
- 02Types of Local Government and Models of AuthorityFoundations of Local Government39 min
- 03The Strategic FrameworkFoundations of Local Government41 min
- 04Working With Others: Partnership and PlaceFoundations of Local Government36 min
- 05Resources: Budget, Finance and DeliveryFoundations of Local Government43 min
- 06Applied Foundations: Case StudiesFoundations of Local Government35 min
- 07Foundations: The Councillor's Lifecycle and the Many Hats They WearWorking in a Political Environment42 min
- 08Reading the Political SystemWorking in a Political Environment43 min