councillor

   An elected representative who serves on a local council. Some 20,000 councillors currently represent local communities and local residents on the 410 local authorities of England and Wales. Scotland has just over 1,200 councillors. The vast majority of them are parttimers who fit in their council work around full-time employment. Accordingly, they are heavily dependent on the advice they receive from senior officers when making decisions, councillors having a democratic mandate to carry their party’s changes through and offi- cers possessing professional expertise. A committee chair will liaise closely with senior officers in his or her area of responsibility, whereas an ordinary ward representative is more likely to be concerned with bringing to the attention of particular officers the cases of individuals or groups of constituents in relation to the particular services.

   As the role of party politics in local councils has increased in recent decades, most councillors are party representatives, although particularly in some rural areas and on lower-tier bodies there are members who serve as Independents.