The Council of the Royal County of Berkshire — also known as the Berkshire County Council — was the top-tier local government administrative body for Berkshire from 1889 to 1998. A strategic authority, with responsibilities for education, public transport, planning, emergency services and waste disposal, it was composed of 87 members. Berkshire County Council shared power with six lower-tier district councils, each of which directed local matters.
It then used these offices up until 1 April 1998, when it was split into six unitary authorities under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1992. Rather than abolition, its powers were passed to the unitary authorities of West Berkshire, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham, Bracknell Forest, Reading and Slough.
Read more about Berkshire County Council: Powers and Composition, Coat of Arms
Famous quotes containing the words county and/or council:
“I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste.”
—Berkeley Breathed (b. 1957)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)