Northumberland County Council Information & Northumberland County Council Links at HealthHaven.com

Northumberland County Council
	1st unitary term
Type
Type	Unicameral
Leadership
Leader	Jeff Reid
Chairman	David Woodard
Structure
Members	67
Political groups	Liberal Democrats; Conservative and Independent group; Labour Party; Independents;
Election
Voting system	First past the post
Last election	1 May 2008
Meeting place
	County Hall, Morpeth
Website
	northumberland.gov.uk

Northumberland County Council is a unitary authority in North East England. It was originally formed in 1889 as the council for the administrative county of Northumberland and reformed in 1974 to cover a the newly-formed non-metropolitan county of Northumberland. As part of the 2009 structural changes to local government in England it became a unitary authority with the same boundaries, this disregarded the referendum held in 2005 in which the population voted against the forming of a Unitary authority.^[1]

The last election for the County Council was as a county council only, on 1 May 2008.

[edit] Naming of the new Unitary Authority

Throughout 2008, the people of Northumberland were consulted about the new name of the unitary authority. The choice was between having the name of the incumbent county council as the name for the new unitary authority - Northumberland County Council or whether a brand new name should be given - Northumberland Council. Online polls were held and the votes of staff within the former district councils were collated and overall, the name of the incumbent county council was preferred on a ratio of nearly 2:1.^[2]

On December 17th 2008, it was decided that the new name would be Northumberland County Council. The Chairman of the Council stated that:

“Having considered the findings of this consultation, it has been decided to call the new authority Northumberland County Council. It is important to reiterate that whilst the single unitary will adopt the name of an existing council, this is emphatically not a County Council takeover. As of 1 April 2009, all existing Northumberland councils will be abolished to make way for a brand new organisation, with new vision, values, and behaviours.”

Legally however, the County Council remains the same body as at present, simply assuming the functions of the districts.^[3]

[edit] Composition

Affiliation		Members
	Liberal Democrat Group	25
	Conservative and Independent Group	19
	Labour Group	17
	Independent Group	5
	Independent Liberal Democrat	1
Total		67