Salisbury City Council is a parish-level council for Salisbury, England. It was established in April 2009 and is based in the city's historic Guildhall. Following the May 2021 election, no party has an overall majority.
The council met in temporary offices until 2011, while the 18th-century Salisbury Guildhall was adapted.[2]
Coat of arms
On 23 March 2010, the city council was granted a royal licence, transferring to it the armorial bearings of the previous City of New Sarum. The arms and supporters were originally recorded at the heraldic visitations of Wiltshire in 1565 and 1623.[5] The blazon of the arms is:
Barry of eight Azure and Or. Supporters: On either side an eagle displayed with two heads Or, ducally gorged Azure.[6][7]
There do not appear to be any meanings attached to the design.[8] The traditional explanation that the blue stripes represent the rivers that meet in the city is now discounted.[8][9] It has also been suggested that the eagles derive from the arms of the Bouverie family, Earls of Radnor, benefactors of the city. However, this also can be discounted, as the arms of the city were recorded before the family was connected with it.[8][9]
Membership
The council has 24 members, elected by eight wards which each elect three councillors.[10] Boundary changes confirmed in 2020 and applied at the 2021 election redrew wards in the central, Harnham, Milford and Bishopdown areas and increased the number of councillors from 23.[11][12]
Elections to the city council took place on Thursday 6 May 2021.[13] The current makeup of the council is shown below; those marked * are also Wiltshire Councillors.
At the first elections to the city council in 2009, the Liberal Democrats gained twelve seats, giving them a majority of one over all other parties.[15]
At the next elections, on Thursday, 2 May 2013, no party had overall control. Days after the election, Jo Broom, who had been elected in Fisherton & Bemerton Village as a Liberal Democrat, joined the Conservatives. Then, following the resignation of a Conservative, there was a by-election in the St Martin's & Cathedral ward on 9 January 2014, won by Patricia Fagan for Labour.
In 2017, the Conservatives won an overall majority for the first time.
^"No. 59250". The London Gazette. 24 November 2009. p. 20329. The QUEEN has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal bearing date 1 April 2009 to confer on the Parish of Salisbury the status of a City.
^Briggs, Geoffrey (1971). Civic and Corporate Heraldry: A Dictionary of Impersonal Arms of England, Wales and N. Ireland. London: Heraldry Today. p. 346. ISBN0-900455-21-7.
^Fox-Davies, A C (1915). The Book of Public Arms, 2nd edition. London: T C & E C Jack. p. 690.
"Views sought on new city council". BBC News Online. 5 March 2008. Retrieved 15 May 2015. Under the new system of local government, the city council would have the same powers and functions as a town or parish council. These include looking after allotments, burial ground, cemeteries and crematoria, bus shelters, community centres, the arts, public footpaths and public toilets.