If you are aged 18 or older you could become a Councillor with your local council and help make your community a great place to be. Find out more with the Local Government Association, a Youth Friendly Employer.
What does it mean to be a councillor?
Being a councillor is all about giving back to your community, using your passion and energy to make a real difference to local people and to wider society.
You can help to shape the future of the local community in all kinds of ways, like:
- representing the views and needs of local people to ensure the community gets the right services
- tackling specific issues
- driving new ideas.
You don’t need any experience or special qualifications to apply for this varied and fulfilling role. You will, however, gain new skills, experience, and both personal and professional confidence!
You can work flexibly and be paid an allowance and expenses for your time.
Hear from young councillors in the LGA podcast…
In the COUNCILLORS episode of the LGA podcast, you can hear from Hertfordshire County Council’s youngest councillor at age 20, Tina Bhartwas.
She wanted to become a local councillor for a variety of reasons. She had lived experience of growing up in poverty, experiencing domestic abuse, and having a period of homelessness as a young person. Those were really motivating factors for why she wanted to improve the community and take action. So she campaigned against education cuts at time when schools were really struggling to stay open. She coordinated the youth wings of climate groups and saw how important the youth voice is to creating really vital change.
She describes working flexibly as a councillor, combining it with university study. She says:
“And as a young councillor I feel quite often I’m one of very few advocates for young people or, you know, perhaps, like I’ll be the youngest person in the room who has got the most recent experience of the education system, for example. I think that’s a lens that we do need to bring into political decision making. “
Tina gives some great insights into what she does as a councillor and how she got involved – the podcast is well worth a listen.
Here are real-life examples of things you could achieve for your local community as a councillor…
- Getting a crossing installed at a dangerous junction
- Getting fitness activities set up for all ages
- Getting better street lighting
- Helping refugee families get settled in the local area
- Creating greener spaces with new planting
- Serving on fostering and adoption panels
- Halting plans to scrap a bike lane
- Installing bins in areas with a high amount of litter
- Including residents’ views and needs in a regeneration plan
What experience or qualifications do you need to become a councillor?
Your passion, interests and personal life experience just as you are really valuable, because councils need to reflect the local population.
Once elected as a councillor, you get training which helps you develop useful skills as well as gaining knowledge. It’s a steep learning curve, but a satisfying one that can make a huge difference to both you and your local community!
The following skills will help you do the job with confidence:
- Community leadership
- Communication skills
- Partnership and team working
- Problem solving, questioning and analytical skills
- Being flexible, adaptable and open-minded
- Organisational and time management skills
- Political understanding
Working flexibly
Becoming a councillor is all about flexible working. According to LGA data, councillors typically spend about 20 hours a week, but some spend 10 hours or less. You can fit it round studies and part-time jobs, or your volunteering work, or being a young parent or carer.
Do you get paid to be a councillor?
Councillors are not paid a salary but they can receive financial compensation called an ‘allowance’ and expenses. This means you are not left out of pocket by covering costs like travelling to meetings. This payment recognises the time you are giving to supporting local people through council activities.
Each council sets its own rate. You can see how much the allowance is in your area is by searching for the ‘Members Allowances Scheme’ on your council’s website.
Find out morePicture yourself working in local government
You don’t always need qualifications and experience to work in local government.
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