| Description | Huntingdonshire County Council was established by the Local Government Act 1888 to carry out the administrative functions previously carried out by the Quarter Sessions Court. It covered the area which is today (2025) almost exactly covered by Huntingdonshire District Council with the addition of Fletton, Woodston, Orton Waterville, Orton Longueville and Alwalton (trasnferred to Peterborough in 1974).
The County Council came into being on 1 April 1889 and met in the Town Hall in Huntingdon, sharing the building with the Borough Council. The County Council never built its own headquarters, so its staff were scattered across Huntingdon in a variety of buildings, including (at times) Gazeley House, Lawrence Court, Walden Court, Maule and Winter Solicitors, and the former Grammar School. The Chairman of the County Council by virtue of his office was Justice of the Peace for the county, and the County Council's clerk was also Clerk of the Peace for the county. The County Council was partly in control of the constabulary, via the Standing Joint Committee. Elections for Members were held every three years. There were 42 elected Members each of whom represented a single electoral division, and fourteen Aldermen who were directly elected by the Members and who did not represent electoral divisions.
The County Council employed permanent staff who worked within departments run by County officials. The original County officials included the County Clerk, the County Treasurer, the Public Analyst (responsible for assessing the safety of food and drink, including drinking water), the County Surveyors, the County Returning Officer, and the Inspector of Weights and Measures. These County officials did not report to a Chief Executive as today, but each instead reported individually to Full Council or to the relevant committee when required to do so. Nor were the individual departments combined at higher level into directorates. This meant that there was no such thing as corporate policy or an overall strategic vision. Instead, the County Clerk usually held things together behind the scenes, just by force of personality. It should be noted that many services which are today regarded as being county-level functions, such as social care, libraries, education and archive services, either did not exist in 1889 or they were the responsibility of other bodies. During its life the County Council gradually acquired more and more powers, such as taking over the functions of school boards in 1902, boards of guardians in 1930, various town planning and housing responsibilities from 1929.
By the 1960s it was clear that Huntingdonshire County Council, always a back-of-an-envelope operation even at the best of times, was too poor financially to discharge its duties properly. In 1965 both the Soke of Peterborough County Council (see CC4) and Huntingdonshire County Council were abolished and were replaced with a single new County Council, called the County Council of Huntingdon and Peterborough (see CC6). |