Full council, committee, sub-committee or working group?

Four names, and councils use them loosely. The law does not. One distinction does almost all the work: what power the body can hold. A committee and a sub-committee can be given the council's functions to exercise. A working group cannot be given anything.

England; general guidance rather than legal advice.

Each row is worked through below, because two of them are where clerks get caught.

The distinction that matters: who can hold a function

Delegation runs through one provision, and it is worth reading closely:

"Subject to any express provision contained in this Act or any Act passed after this Act, a local authority may arrange for the discharge of any of their functions- (a) by a committee, a sub-committee or an officer of the authority; or (b) by any other local authority."

• LGA 1972, s.101(1)

That is the complete list. A committee, a sub-committee, an officer, another council. A working group is not on it, and neither is an individual councillor. So a council cannot delegate a decision to a working group - not because anyone has prohibited it, but because the power to delegate simply does not extend that far. The same is true of the chairman acting alone, and of "the chairman and the clerk" acting together.

This is settled across the sector's guidance and is reflected in the schemes of delegation that councils publish: functions go to committees, sub-committees and the clerk, and working groups report back.

Two further points from the same section are easy to miss.

Delegating does not give the power away. Section 101(4) provides that arrangements for discharge by a committee, sub-committee or officer "shall not prevent the authority or committee by whom the arrangements are made from exercising those functions". Full council can still take a planning response itself even though the Planning Committee has the delegation. The delegation is a permission, not a transfer.

The budget and the precept cannot be delegated at all. The 1972 Act has its own reservation in s.101(6), but it is written in terms of "levying, or issuing a precept for, a rate" - pre-council -tax language that no longer describes what a parish council does. The provision that bites today is in the Local Government Finance Act 1992:

"... each of the functions of an authority mentioned in subsection (2) below shall be discharged only by the authority."

• LGFA 1992, s.67(1)

A parish or town council is a local precepting authority (s.39(2)(c)), and two of the functions in s.67(2) are squarely its own:

• issuing the precept - s.67(2)(d), "issuing a precept under Chapter IV of this Part", which is where a local precepting authority's precept is issued (s.41); and
• calculating the council tax requirement - s.67(2)(b) covers the calculations in sections 42A to 51, which include s.49A, a parish council's calculation of its council tax requirement for the year. In practice, the budget.

And note what s.67(3) does not do. It allows a committee to exercise the function of setting an amount of council tax under s.67(2)(c) - a billing authority's job, not the parish council's - but it does not extend to issuing a precept. So the budget and the precept both belong to full council, and there is no committee route to either.

If anything else in the council's standing orders is marked "full council only", check it against its own statute rather than assuming - most such items are the council's own policy choice, not a legal bar.

Full council

The council itself: every councillor, summoned to a meeting of the whole body. Its meetings are governed by Schedule 12 - three clear days' notice with a summons specifying the business, a quorum of one-third of the whole number of members and never fewer than three, minutes signed at the same or next suitable meeting.

Full council is also the only body that can create a committee. That happens by resolution, and in practice at the annual meeting, alongside appointing the members and confirming the terms of reference.

Committee

A committee is appointed by the council under s.102(1)(a). Three things follow that surprise people.

The public may attend. This is not a courtesy. Section 100 of the 1972 Act applies the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 to committees:

"... section 1 of the 1960 Act shall apply to any committee appointed by one or more local authorities under section 102 below ..."

• LGA 1972, s.100(2)

So a committee meeting is open to the public on the same footing as a council meeting, and the public can be excluded by a resolution under s.1(2) of the 1960 Act - and, separately, for disorderly conduct or other misbehaviour, which s.1(8) preserves. Our guide to exempt business and confidential items covers how to word that resolution.

Public notice is required, but it comes from a different place. Because the 1960 Act applies, so does its notice provision: public notice of the time and place of the meeting, posted at the council's offices or - and this is the option that applies to most parish councils, which have no offices - "in some central and conspicuous place in the area with which it is concerned", "three clear days at least before the meeting or, if the meeting is convened at shorter notice, then at the time it is convened" (1960 Act, s.1(4)(a)). The Schedule 12 summons rule - the one that must specify the business to be transacted - applies to meetings of the council, and paragraph 44 does not extend it to committees. In practice every council should require a committee summons in its standing orders anyway; the point is that for a committee this is the council's own rule, so it is worth checking that it is actually there. See three clear days' notice.

The quorum is whatever the council says it is. The one-third-minimum-three rule in Schedule 12 is about meetings of the council and is not carried across. Instead:

"Standing orders may be made as respects any committee of a local authority by that authority ... with respect to the quorum, proceedings and place of meeting of the committee or joint committee (including any sub-committee) but, subject to any such standing orders, the quorum, proceedings and place of meeting shall be such as the committee, joint committee or sub-committee may determine."

• LGA 1972, s.106

If the council's standing orders are silent, the committee sets its own quorum - which is not a position any council should want to be in. Fix it in standing orders.

Non-councillors on a committee

A committee "other than a committee for regulating and controlling the finance of the local authority or of their area" may include people who are not councillors (s.102(3)). So a Finance Committee must be councillors only; an Allotments or Burial Ground Committee need not be.

But - and this is the row worth being clear on - a non-councillor on an ordinary committee cannot vote:

"... a person who- (a) is a member of a committee appointed under a power to which this section applies by a relevant authority and is not a member of that authority ... shall for all purposes be treated as a non-voting member of that committee ..."

• Local Government and Housing Act 1989, s.13(1)

Two checks make this bite on a parish council. The powers to which s.13 applies include "the powers conferred on any relevant authority by subsection (1) of section 102" (s.13(2)(a)) - so ordinary committees and sub-committees. And "relevant authority" is defined in s.13(9) as a local authority of the descriptions in s.21(1) of that Act "or any parish or community council". Parliament named parish councils expressly. Section 13(7) spells out the effect: such a person "shall not be entitled to vote at any meeting ... on any question which falls to be decided at that meeting".

There is one exception that matters to a parish council, and it is the advisory committee. Section 13(4) lists committees the non-voting rule does not reach, and s.13(4)(e) is "a committee appointed under section 102(4) of the Local Government Act 1972". So on a genuine advisory committee, non-councillor members may vote - on its advice, which is all an advisory committee produces. The same goes for a sub-committee appointed by one (s.13(3)(a)). The other exceptions in s.13(4) and (5) - education appeal panels, superannuation committees, pension scheme managers, fire functions, police and crime commissioners - reach nothing a parish council does.

Do not confuse this with co-option to fill a casual vacancy. A co-opted councillor is a councillor, with a full vote everywhere. The non-voting rule is about someone who is not a member of the council at all being appointed to one of its committees. They can be appointed, they can speak, they can shape the outcome - but on a committee that decides anything, they cannot vote on it.

One further consequence: on an ordinary committee a resident member counts towards the committee's membership but not towards a decision. Set the quorum in terms of voting members, or you can end up with a quorate meeting that cannot resolve anything.

Sub-committee

A sub-committee is appointed by the committee, not by the council (s.102(1)(c)), and that single fact drives the differences.

It can hold delegated power, and possibly already does. Section 101(2) provides that where a committee may discharge functions, "unless the local authority otherwise direct, the committee may arrange for the discharge of any of those functions by a sub-committee or an officer of the authority". The default runs the other way from what most councils assume: a committee with delegated powers may pass them down unless the council has said it may not. If that is not wanted, say so in the terms of reference.

There is no statutory right for the public to attend. Section 100(2) reaches a committee "appointed by one or more local authorities" - and a sub-committee is appointed by a committee. It therefore falls outside, and attendance at a sub-committee is a matter for the council's standing orders rather than statute. Most councils choose to admit the public anyway, and there is a good argument that they should: a sub-committee exercising a delegated function is taking real decisions out of public view. But it is a choice, not a duty.

Minutes are still required. This is the asymmetry worth remembering - no public right of entry, but the full minute-keeping obligation:

"Paragraphs 39 to 43 above (except paragraph 41(3)) shall apply in relation to a committee of a local authority (including a joint committee) or a sub-committee of any such committee as they apply in relation to a local authority."

• LGA 1972, Schedule 12, paragraph 44(1)

What paragraph 44 carries across to both committees and sub-committees is: decisions by a majority of those present and voting, with a casting vote for the person presiding (paragraph 39); the names of members present recorded (paragraph 40); minutes drawn up, entered in a book and signed at the same or next suitable meeting (paragraph 41); the power to make standing orders (paragraph 42); and proceedings not invalidated by a vacancy or a defect in a member's election or qualification (paragraph 43).

A committee approves its own minutes. Full council receives them - it does not approve them and cannot amend them. That trips up a lot of councils, and approving and adopting minutes sets out why. Whether an elector's statutory right to inspect minutes extends to committee minutes is a narrower question than it looks; see who can see parish council minutes.

Working group

A working group has no statutory existence. That is the whole of its advantage and the whole of its risk.

The advantage: it is not a meeting of the council or of a committee, so none of the machinery applies. No public notice, no quorum, no minute book, no requirement to meet in person. Four members and the clerk can sit down with a builder's quotes, or meet over video, and come back with a recommendation. For gathering information and drafting options, that is exactly the right tool.

The risk: it cannot decide anything. Not "should not" - cannot. Section 101(1) does not reach it. A working group that agrees to accept a quote has not made a decision the council can rely on; the decision has to be taken by the council, a committee, a sub-committee or an officer with the relevant delegation. In practice that means a working group's output is a report and a recommendation, and the resolution happens somewhere else.

The trap: a working group may be an advisory committee

The 1972 Act has a fifth category that most councils never name, and it is the one working groups tend to drift into:

"A local authority may appoint a committee ... to advise the appointing authority ... on any matter relating to the discharge of their functions, and any such committee- (a) may consist of such persons (whether members of the appointing authority or authorities or not) appointed for such term as may be determined by the appointing authority ..."

• LGA 1972, s.102(4)

An advisory committee is still a committee, appointed under s.102, and it may consist entirely of non-councillors. The sector's guidance often treats "advisory committee", "working party", "working group" and "panel" as interchangeable labels for the same informal thing. Legally they are not interchangeable: if the council formally appoints a standing body under s.102(4) to advise it, that body is a committee appointed under s.102, and the public-access provision in s.100(2) is expressed to catch any committee appointed by a local authority under that section. On that reading an advisory committee's meetings are open to the public in the same way as any other committee's - and it must meet in person.

We have not found any authority, or any published guidance, addressing the point directly, so treat this as a reading of the provisions rather than a settled answer. The practical course is to decide which you actually want and then be consistent:

• A genuinely informal working group. Not appointed under s.102. Set up by a minuted resolution that describes it as an informal group of members to gather information and report back, with an end date. It advises; it holds nothing; it is not in the public meeting cycle.
• A standing body that meets regularly, has resident members and is treated as part of the council's structure. Accept that it is an advisory committee in substance, name it one, and run it as a committee: public notice, public admission, minutes.

The version that causes trouble is the one in between - a permanent "working group" with its own membership and terms of reference that meets monthly behind closed doors and whose recommendations are rubber-stamped. It looks like a committee to everybody except the standing orders, and a complaint about it is hard to answer.

A related question - whether any of these bodies can meet by video at all - is dealt with in virtual and remote meetings.

Choosing between them

• Does it need to take decisions? If yes, it must be a committee, a sub-committee or a delegation to the clerk. There is no fourth option.
• Is it permanent? Permanent plus decision-making means a committee, with terms of reference approved by full council and reviewed annually.
• Is it a narrow slice of a committee's work? A sub-committee, with the committee's terms of reference stating whether it may hold delegated powers - because the default is that it may.
• Is it a short task with an end point? A working group, set up by resolution, with a reporting date and an express statement that it has no delegated authority.
• Do you want residents in the room as members? Possible on a committee (except finance), but on a committee that decides things they cannot vote. If you want them voting, the body has to be an advisory committee - where they may - and it then decides nothing. If the point is their expertise rather than their vote, a working group or an advisory committee is usually the honest answer.

Whichever you choose, write the terms of reference down and cover: membership and who chairs; quorum, expressed in voting members; what is delegated, and in what money terms; whether sub-delegation is permitted; how it reports; and when it ends or is reviewed.

How CouncilPapers handles this

In CouncilPapers each committee is its own unit, with its own membership, its own default agenda content and its own meetings history - and a committee in CouncilPapers corresponds to a committee or a sub-committee in the council's constitution, so a sub-committee is set up in its own right rather than as an appendix to its parent.

The minutes model follows the law rather than cutting across it. A committee is only ever offered its own prior minutes for approval; CouncilPapers will not offer one committee the minutes of another. Separately, one committee is designated the adopting committee - in almost all cases Full Council - and that is the only committee that can adopt the minutes of other committees into the council's record. Approval and adoption are kept as two distinct steps, which is exactly the distinction this guide turns on. The help centre explains committees and the adopting committee in full.

A meeting reaches the council's public pages through its agenda's status, meeting by meeting, so nothing becomes public until the agenda or the minutes are actually published.

If you are deciding whether a new body is warranted at all, the help centre covers when to create a committee and managing committee membership.

Last reviewed 29 September 2026. General guidance for councils in England, not legal advice.