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Local Councils are made up of two different sets of people working together.

The first are Councillors, who just like Members of Parliament are elected, but in local elections. Unlike MP’s they do not get a salary – just an allowance and some expenses. Councillors are not employed by the Council. They take decisions on what should be done and keep an eye on the organisation.

Councillors work closely with ‘Officers’, who are paid employees of the County Council. Lancashire County Council has about 40,000 ‘Officers’ who make sure that what the Councillors decide should be done is done.

The County Council has what is called a ‘constitution’. This is a very important document that explains in great detail how the Council is run and how decisions are made. A full copy of the constitution is available on the Council’s website at: www.lancashire.gov.uk/council/constitution/index.asp

Below is a diagram that shows the main people and groups who work together to operate the County Council. To learn more about their roles click on the box you have selected.

The Full Council diagram ^

There are 84 County Councillors who each represent all the people who live in areas of Lancashire called 'electoral divisions'. They all meet in 'Full Council' at least 6 times a year.

The main role of the Full Council is:

Councillors usually belong to a political party. BUT they might be an independent (that means they are not a member of any political party)

At the moment there are:

The Chairman of the County Council diagram ^

This person is elected by the Full Council each year and has several important responsibilities such as:

The Leader of the Council diagram ^

The Leader of the Council is County Councillor Hazel Harding. It is her job to ‘chair’ the Cabinet and to appoint and remove members of that group. The Leader is elected by the Full Council at its first meeting after each County Council election. She has particular responsibility for making sure that the Council is continually improving.

The Cabinet diagram ^

The Cabinet is made up of 10 Councillors including the Leader of the County Council. They are responsible for delivering almost all of the County Council’s services to the people of Lancashire. They are the people who take most of the decisions either together as the Cabinet or individually as Cabinet Members – or “portfolio holders”.

Each Cabinet member is responsible for different areas (this is called a portfolio) such as Schools, Social Services, Roads, Transportation, Planning and Environment and issues like Waste Disposal etc.

The Cabinet meets each month in public. You can find out more about its work and watch a live meeting by checking out the Council website at
www.lancashire.gov.uk/Council/index.php under “Your Council”. Meetings of the Cabinet and some other Council meetings are shown live on the Internet. This is called ‘webcasting’ – so if you want to see a meeting as it happens or a recording of it you can by visiting the website.

Overview and Scrutiny Committees diagram ^

There are 4 of these committees. Their job is to check the work of the Cabinet and to make sure it is making the reasonable decisions and providing the best services it can for the people of Lancashire. They also set up “Task Groups” to research issues and make recommendations on what should be done to improve services.

Committees diagram ^

The County Council has set up a number of Committees to look at the various areas of its business. Some of these Committees are required by law. These include the Development Control Committee, which looks at planning applications, the Regulatory Committee, which mainly looks after public rights of way (public footpaths) and the Standards Committee which makes sure that Councillors and Officers are doing things in the right way.

Partnerships diagram ^

The County Council, believes that it is important to work with other people and groups outside of the Council. It works with many different community leaders and groups like the district Councils, the police, health authorities, local businesses and local people in ‘partnerships’ to set-up projects that will improve daily life – such as housing, education and Social Services.

One example is the Lancashire Road Safety Partnership where the County Council works with partners from different organisations involved with road safety such as the police, health and community safety to try to cut down the number of people killed and injured in road accidents.

Officers of the Council diagram ^

Officers are people who work for the whole Council and are involved in all areas of its work. They advise the Councillors, make sure the decisions made by the Council happen and provide the services to the public that the Council are responsible for.

Officers are grouped in different departments called directorates.
The directorates are as follows:-

Directorates top ^

Education and Cultural Services Directorate

The Directorate aims to make Lancashire a County where everyone enjoys learning and achieves success. It is a large Directorate and, if we include teachers and other school staff, employs almost 19,000 people. The Directorate spends arround £300 million each year. In addition, Lancashire schools spend almost £500 million each year.

Even before children start primary school we aim to help them learn and develop. Working with others, we have increased the number of places in nursery schools available for three year olds. This enables them to make a good start when they go to primary school.

There are more than 600 nursery, primary, secondary and special schools in Lancashire. These schools are run by headteachers and boards of governors. The Education and Cultural Services Directorate aims to help schools to provide a first class education service. This help includes:

We also work with people in the Social Services Directorate to safeguard children from harm. One of the ways in which we do this is through licensing children and young people for employment, entertainment and modeling or sporting activities and checking that they will not be exposed to harm when undertaking these activities.

Education doesn’t stop when we leave school. The Council provides many services for young people and adults of all ages to allow them to go on learning throughout their lives if they wish.

Our Youth and Community Service is one of the biggest in the Country. It provides services and activities for young people including an information and advice service, the development of youth sport, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, youth and community centres and training courses to help young people develop.

The Adult and Continuing Education Service provides a range of development and leisure courses through our own colleges or funded through colleges of further education. Around 40,000 people a year sit these courses.

In addition to providing education opportunities the Directorate also provides a range of cultural services. The largest of these is the Library and Information Service. We have 84 libraries and a number of mobile libraries and hold more than 2 million books. We try to encourage as many children and young people as possible to join their local library and develop their reading skills. We now have computers in all our libraries to enable people to use the Internet and more than half a million people are using these computers each year. Some libraries also have facilities to enable people with special needs to use computers.

The Lancashire Record Office, based in Preston, holds documents and records relating to Lancashire and the people who live here. These documents are carefully stored and cover more than 12 kilometres of shelving. They include records dating from the 12th Century right up to the present day. The records help people who are studying local history and people wanting to trace their family trees.

The Record Office also holds a collection of over 110,000 sound recordings. These include dialect (people’s accent) music, local radio programmes and sounds of the region such as textile machinery, railway engines etc.

We also provide a number of museums around the County. These are visited by more than 140,000 people each year including 23,000 pupils from local schools. Our museums work with schools and some items held by the museums, such as costumes, armour and natural history collections (shells, insects, birds etc.), are loaned to schools to help pupils’ studies.

Office of the Chief Executive top ^

The Chief Executive is the head of the Council’s 40,000 officers and his Office looks after a number of services most of which help make sure the Council is operating correctly. He heads the County Management Board (the board of directors) and is the main advisor to the Council.
The law affects the work of local government in many ways. The Chief Executive has a Legal Services Group who’s job it is to make sure that the Council complies with the law and to represent the Council in any Court cases it is involved in.

The Democratic Services Group works closely with County Councillors to manage the day to day business of the Cabinet, the Full Council and its Committees. It provides training for Councillors, advises on procedures that have to be followed, arranges meetings and puts together the papers that Councillors need when they attend meetings. It also deals with elections and with civic events like Royal visits and the official opening of new buildings. The Group also looks into complaints made by the public about things the Council has done.

The County Council recently asked people living in Lancashire what kind of place they wanted Lancashire to become and they said they wanted it to be “a place where they could expect 7 things” :-

The Council now calls these things its “Corporate Objectives” and the Chief Executive has a Team called the Policy Unit whose main job it is to make sure these happen. This means that the Unit needs to work with County Councillors, all other parts of the County Council and with other organisations like the district Councils, businesses, the Police and health authorities and with local people all of who play a part in making things happen.

The Unit also does a lot of work to make sure that the Council is providing the best services it can and keeps an eye on things that others like the European Parliament are doing which might affect the Council.

The Corporate Communications Group talks to the people of Lancashire about the work of the County Council. It works with local and national newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations and produces Lancashire's largest community newspaper, Vision, delivered to all homes every month. The Group look after the Council’s website, produce leaflets, organise events and listen to what people want through ‘Life in Lancashire’, a residents' panel of 2,500 Lancashire people of all ages. As a major employer, the advertising unit, promotes thousands of jobs with the Council in Vision, other newspapers and on our website. The purpose of the Group is to make people more aware of what the Council does and to encourage Lancashire people to get involved in working with it.

Finally, the Human Resources Group looks after personnel matters that affect the 40,000 people who work for the County Council. It gives advice on appointments, conditions of service, working arrangements, equal opportunities, training, health and safety, employee welfare and counselling.

The Resources Directorate top ^

The Resources Directorate supports all the other Directorates of the County Council in serving the people of Lancashire.

The Directorate can be split into three main areas of work:

1. Property Services

2. Financial Management Services

3. Information Services

The Social Services Directorate top ^

Everyone needs a little help at some time in their lives. Some people need support to help them manage because they’re older, are disabled or have a learning difficulty. Some children and their families also need support with the difficulties they face in life. These people need extra help so that they can live as safely and comfortably as everyone else. Children might need protection to keep them safe from harm.

The purpose of Social Services is to work with other people such as doctors, health visitors, the police and teachers to provide that help and protection.

Our work to protect children and to support their families includes helping families when it looks like things are starting to go wrong. We offer support services in the community to help keep children and families together. We make sure there are foster carers and staff in children’s homes who can take care of children whose parents are not able to look after them, until they can go back home or can live with a new family. We also make sure there are adoptive parents to take care of children who will never be able to live with their own parents. We also keep children safe and protect them from harm.

Some adults need help to stay safely in their own homes so we provide carers or meals so that they keep strong and healthy. Some older people need help to get them back on their feet when they have been in hospital. They may need help to stay in their own home or to go to special flats where other older people live as well as people who can help them if they fall or become ill. Other adults may have a difficulty learning things quickly or find it difficult to cope. They may need help everyday to make sure they are safe and to learn to enjoy the things that other adults like to do. This includes working as volunteers to help out in their communities or get a job. For some of these adults the biggest problem could be how people react to them rather than who they are. In other words some people find it hard to accept people who are different to them. We try to help people overcome this problem.

There are 21 Social Services offices across the County where people can call in to get information and advice on services. We also operate an emergency service that covers the whole of Lancashire at times when the offices are closed, such as during the night or at weekend.

The Directorate spends about £400 a year and has 4,000 people who work for it.

The Environment Directorate top ^

The Environment Directorate spends more than £100 million every year, provides more than 260 services and employs 950 staff.
The things we do can be split into three areas:-

Highways and Transportation

Planning

Public Protection

Direct Service Organisations

Often, the services which provide the backbone of a County are more or less invisible. As we drive our cars, we rarely think about the planning and maintenance of the surface beneath our wheels. And when we pass children running and shouting in a school playground, we don’t usually stop to think about the thousands of school meals the County’s children gobble up each day!

In Lancashire, many of these 'invisible' services are provided by three Direct Service Organisations.

The Commercial Services Direct Services Organisation prepares all those school dinners and does most of the cleaning and catering for schools and other Council buildings. It also provides the school crossing patrol service. With a turnover of about £20 million each year, it employs over 3,500 staff.

The Engineering Services Direct Services Organisation provides most of the Council’s maintenance services including maintaining the roads, looking after the Council’s vehicles and cutting the grass at schools and other County buildings. It has a turnover of about £50 million and 500 staff.

Vulnerable people are looked after by the Care Services Direct Services Organisation which runs things like homes for older people, and also cares for people who can’t always look after themselves in their own homes. It has a turnover of about £20 million and employs 2,200 staff.

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