Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Local authority definition

What does Local authority mean? In legal practice, a local authority is the elected council that provides local government for a defined area, exercising statutory functions including planning, housing, social care, education, highways, environmental health, licensing, and the collection of council tax or rates. The expression appears widely in legislation and case law; its precise scope is set by the relevant statute. England: county councils and district councils (including metropolitan boroughs), unitary authorities, London Boroughs and the Common Council of the City of London; parish and town councils are local authorities at the most local tier. Wales: unitary county and county borough councils. Scotland: the...

English and Welsh Local Government: Statutory Powers, Devolution Structures, Governance Models, Decision-making and Scrutiny, and the Roles of Members and Statutory Officers

Published by a LexisNexis Local Government expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note sets out an overview of Local authority structure and purpose. It also summarises Governance models and explains the respective roles of members and officers within those arrangements. It highlights fundamental features that are often missed by newly elected members (councillors) and newly appointed officers, lawyers included.

Structure and purpose of local authorities

Local authorities are organisations brought into being by statute as single legal entities. They may act only as legislation authorises, whether under their establishing statute or through other enactments that extend their powers. Any action must also pursue solely the purposes Parliament intended when passing the relevant statutes. Where an Authority acts outside those powers, or for a purpose not so intended—wilfully as an abuse of power, or inadvertently—it is acting ‘beyond its powers’. This is the concept of ‘ultra vires’. Any ultra vires act by a local authority is liable to legal challenge...

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Philip McCourt

Bevan Brittan LLP

Philip joined Top 100 law firm Bevan Brittan in 2022 following a distinguished career in local government. He is qualified as both a solicitor and chartered secretary and began his local government career in 1988. He was first appointed as a monitoring officer, head of legal services and member of an authority’s senior management team in 2000.He has since gone on to work for and on behalf of a number of local authorities and has additionally led on a number of projects for wider local government, such as designing the ethical governance toolkit for the Local Government Association and in leading on a number of best practice documents, including the code of corporate governance for interests in local authority companies and the model member planning member code, which was described by the UK Supreme Court in 2017 as providing sound practical...

Web page updated on 26/05/2026

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