Welcome to East Herts District Council

Like many authorities, East Herts District Council operates in a complex political landscape with 48 town and parish councils as well as the county council to work with. Many district councillors are also town and/or county councillors which can bring efficiency in mobilising support and resources, but this can also come with challenges: with five distinct towns alongside over 100 individual villages and hamlets, there are many strong local identities within East Herts, as well as its overall district wide identity. Currently our council is in ‘no overall control’ with a joint administration combining the Green Party and Liberal Democrats.

The council’s Executive has plenty of ambition: it recently opened a new state of the art cultural venue with cinema screens and multiple stages in Hertford (BEAM), is leading a town centre regeneration project in Bishop’s Stortford (Old River Lane) bringing in around £70m of investment, and is collaborating on one the country’s largest garden town developments while working to bring significant improvements in sustainability across the district. Reporting in to the Chief Executive are five directors who have the responsibility for delivering services through a mixture of in-house, shared and contracted arrangements (the net cost of which is £18m in 2025/26). We have partnership arrangements with two neighbouring councils, Stevenage and North Herts, and we need to maintain those positive relationships through this period of huge reorganisation in local government.

We undertook a DMA review last year with the support of the LGA and that work has helped us with reviewing and reshaping our target operating model to help us meet the challenges facing local government. As with many councils, we face skills shortages and recruitment difficulties in key service areas and have created a People Ambition Strategy to help us develop the capability and capacity of our workforce to match the council’s ambitions. Momentum on transformation and change needs to be sustained and realising our commercial strategy is also key to ensuring the viability of the council, and in the longer term, its place in whatever new arrangements for local government in Hertfordshire are agreed.