About the UK council register

The register lists every council in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that runs its own website for residents. It includes councils that have been abolished or replaced, so you can follow a council through a reorganisation.

We built it because there was no single, current list that joins a council's website to its official code. The UK council leaderboard uses it to decide which council websites to assess each month, and anyone else is welcome to use it too.

Each council has one entry, keyed by its website domain. An entry holds:

• Domain: The council's main website address without www, for example leeds.gov.uk. This is the key for the entry and never changes while the council exists.
• Name: The council's name as it uses it.
• ONS code: The 9-character code the Office for National Statistics gives each local authority, for example E08000035. Use it to join the register to official statistics.
• Type: County council, district council, unitary authority, metropolitan borough, London borough, Welsh principal area, Scottish council or Northern Ireland district council.
• Nation and region: The nation comes from the first letter of the ONS code. English councils also have their ONS region, for example North West.
• Homepage: The address of the council's home page, from GOV.UK Local Links Manager where it has one.
• Valid from and valid to: The dates the council starts and stops existing. Most councils have neither date.
• Predecessors and successors: The councils it replaced, or the councils that took over from it.
• Status: Worked out from the dates: proposed before the valid from date, retired after the valid to date, and active otherwise.

When councils are reorganised, the new council gets its own entry with a valid from date, and is shown as proposed until that date. The old councils get a valid to date and list the new council as their successor. After that date they are shown as retired.

Retired councils stay in the register so links and history still make sense, but the leaderboard stops assessing them.

If something is wrong or missing, for example a council has moved to a new website address or a merger date has changed, tell us:

1. Find the council on the register page.
2. Select Report a correction next to it.
3. Say what is wrong, what it should be and, if you can, link to a council or GOV.UK page that shows it.

Anyone can report a correction, and you do not need to give your name. If you leave an email address, we only use it to ask about your correction and never publish it.

A person checks every correction against an official source before the register changes. Accepted corrections, and fields we fill in from ONS and GOV.UK data, are listed in the changelog with the date and what changed. Corrections we cannot confirm are not published.