What services is Hertsmere responsible for?
We are responsible for providing services including benefits, car parking, community safety, elections, environmental health, housing needs, leisure and parks, licensing, planning, street cleaning and kerbside waste and recycling collections. You can have a look at what services we provide through the menu on the left-hand side of this page.
We work in partnership with other local authorities to improve the quality of life for residents but we do not have any control over services which are statutorily provided by other organisations e.g. roads and street lights as they are provided by Hertfordshire County Council. We are completely separate from the county council with different responsibilities, staff and councillors.
Hertfordshire County Council is responsible for providing services including adoption and fostering, early years childcare, fire and rescue, health and social care, household waste recycling centres, libraries, public transport, registry, roads, schools, street lights, trading standards and youth provision across the ten districts of Hertfordshire.
There are also town and parish councils which operate in some areas of Hertsmere.
More information about who does what.
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Your local councillors
Hertsmere has 39 councillors in 16 wards who are elected to serve for four years at a time.
Your ward councillors are elected to represent you and your community and are also known as Members (Members of the Council). They should be your first point of contact if you want to comment or see some action on an issue or a service that concerns you. If you are not sure which ward you live in you can use our mapping tool to find out and to see the names of your ward councillors.
Members are happy for you to contact them at any reasonable time.
Hertsmere Vision
The Hertsmere Vision is a high level document which articulates our aspirations for the borough. It is supported by a Corporate Plan, reviewed each year, which sets out how we will deliver against this vision.
To achieve this, we have a number of committees and operate a cabinet form of governance. The Leader and Cabinet are in some Councils called the Executive. They take most major decisions within a framework approved by the council. This is then scrutinised through our Overview and Scrutiny processes. Information about each committee is available by clicking on the links listed below:
- Cabinet
- Council
- Audit Committee
- Licensing Committee
- Licensing Sub-Committees
- Operations Review Committee
- Policy Review Committee
- Personnel Committee
- Planning Committee
- Standards Committee
Prior to May 2023 the Cabinet was known as the Executive
You can find out more about which committees councillors sit on from our members' directory page.
The dates and times of meetings are on our meeting schedule page.
If you live, or own a property or business in Hertsmere, you can submit a question to be considered at a Council meeting. You can also speak at a Planning Committee on a planning application, or attend a Licensing Sub-Committee hearing.
Find out about our organisational structure.
Forward Planning programme
Our Forward Plan contains matters which the Leader believes will be the subject of key decisions. A key decision is defined as one which will result in expenditure or savings of £100,000 revenue or £100,000 or more capital in any one year, or one that has a significant impact on people living or working in two or more wards.
You can see the latest version of our council's Forward Plan here or call in to our offices.
You can read more about our procedures on all these issues in our constitution.
- Find out more about how the council works
