Dorchester - County Hall (geograph 3007327)

Dorset County Council Dorset County Council (DCC) was the county council for the county of Dorset in England. It provided the upper tier of local government, below which were district councils, and town and parish councils. The county council had 46 elected council ...

was a

non-metropolitan county A non-metropolitan county, or colloquially, shire county, is a county-level entity in England that is not a metropolitan county. The counties typically have populations of 300,000 to 1.8 million. The term ''shire county'' is, however, an unoffi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Elections were first held on 23 January 1889, thereafter elections were held every three years, with all members being elected by the

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast thei ...

system of election on the same day. Later, the cycle was changed to one election in every four years, and the last such election was in 2017. There were also occasional by-elections, the last of which took place in December 2016. Under the Local Government Act 1972 the

of Dorset was created from the merger of the

administrative county An administrative county was a first-level administrative division in England and Wales from 1888 to 1974, and in Ireland from 1899 until either 1973 (in Northern Ireland) or 2002 (in the Republic of Ireland). They are now abolished, although mos ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

and the

county borough County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent te ...

of Bournemouth. The first elections to the new authority were in April 1973, and the council took office on 1 April 1974. From its creation until 1997, the county council administered the entire area of the ceremonial county of Dorset. Bournemouth and Poole became

unitary authorities A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governme ...

in 1997, but continued to form part of the county for

ceremonial A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan origin, via the Latin '' caerimonia''. Church and civil (secular ...

purposes. The council was abolished on 31 March 2019 as part of structural changes to local government in Dorset.

Political control

From the first election in 1973 following the reforms of the Local Government Act 1972 until the council's abolition in 2019, political control of the council was held by the following parties:

Leadership

The leaders of the council from 2006 until the council's abolition in 2019 were: Rebecca Knox served as the leader for the shadow authority created in 2018 to oversee the transition to the successor Dorset Council, but at the first meeting of the new council after it came into effect Spencer Flower was appointed leader.

County council composition

Composition since 1973

County result maps

File:Dorset UK local election 2005 map.svg, 2005 results map File:Dorset UK local election 2009 map.svg, 2009 results map File:Dorset UK local election 2013 map.svg, 2013 results map File:Dorset UK local election 2017 map.svg, 2017 results map

By-election results

By-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

s occur when seats become vacant between council elections. Below is a summary of recent by-elections; full by-election results can be found by clicking on the by-election name.

References

{{English County Council Elections Council elections in Dorset County council elections in England