How the County Council works
The County Council consists of 78 County Councillors (also known as Members). Elections are held every four years for all our Councillors. The next elections will be in May 2009 (the last elections were on 5 May 2005).
Though there are many facets to a County Councillor's work their key role is to ensure that the people of Hampshire get the high quality services they need; to set and allocate budgets to make this happen and to decide on the priorities where difficult decisions must be made.
All 78 County Councillors normally meet six times a year at the Full Council to set the boundaries of the work of the Council and debate issues. The Councillors have other roles designed to ensure the people of Hampshire are getting the best services possible. These roles include:
Most decisions in the County Council are either made by the Leader and Cabinet or Full Council. This link will tell you about how decisions are made in the Council, who is making them and how you can influence them. You can also search and find specific decisions in our Decision Programme.
Scrutiny is the role in which Members who do not make decisions get the chance to make sure that the right decisions are made and to provide challenge where it is needed. This might include reviewing how well a policy is working, exploring how an area of work or policy of the County could be delievered better or contributing to decisions to be taken by the Executive. The Scrutiny pages will tell you more about what that means and how you can contribute.
Councillors work as Individuals to represent the people in the areas that elected them – their individual web pages tell you more about what they are doing.
Councillors also meet in local Hampshire Action Teams (HATs) which are groups of County Councillors whose role it is to work together with each other, and partners, to ensure the needs of local areas are being heard and best served by the County Council. Visit their web pages to see what your local HAT has achieved and is working on, as well as how you can contribute.