Ask a room full of Liverpool residents who runs the city and you will get a room full of shrugs, one confident wrong answer, and someone who says "the council, innit" as if that settles it.

It does not settle it. Liverpool is run by three separate layers of government at once: a city council, a city-region Combined Authority, and a handful of MPs in Westminster. They have different jobs, different bosses, and different phone numbers. Nobody sat you down and explained this, so most people just guess.

That guessing has a cost. Residents ring the wrong office, wait weeks for a reply that was never coming, and give up before they reach the person who could actually fix it. A pothole complaint sent to the wrong desk does not become a filled pothole. It becomes an email nobody reads.

This is the plain version: who does what, who you elected to do it, and who to actually contact when something breaks. For the full run-through of Liverpool's various "mayors" and how many of them there have been, see our companion guide, WTF Does the Mayor of Liverpool Actually Do?

The short version

  • Ward councillor: your direct local rep. First port of call for casework and complaints.
  • Liverpool City Council: runs day-to-day services. Bins, planning, social care, most roads, council tax.
  • Liverpool City Region Combined Authority: run by the Metro Mayor. Handles transport, skills and regeneration across six boroughs, not just Liverpool.
  • Your MP: sits in Parliament. Makes national law. Cannot overrule a council decision on your street.
  • 2021 to 2024: government-appointed commissioners oversaw specific council functions after an independent report found serious governance failures. That ended on 9 June 2024.
  • Turnout at the last all-out council election, May 2023: 28.1%. Most of your neighbours did not vote for whoever is now deciding your bin day.

The three layers

Illustration of three layers of Liverpool local government stacked over one postcode.
Three layers, one postcode. This is why local government feels more confusing than it should.

Think of it as three governments stacked on top of one postcode.

At the bottom sits your ward councillor, elected by people in your immediate area. Liverpool has 85 councillors across 64 wards, all elected together every four years since a boundary review in 2023. Your councillor cannot personally fill a pothole, but they can chase the department that does, and they sit on the council that sets policy.

Above that sits Liverpool City Council itself, the body that actually runs city services. Since 2023 it works on a leader-and-cabinet model: councillors elect one of their own as Leader, currently Cllr Liam Robinson, and the Leader picks a cabinet that takes the big decisions on budgets and services.

Alongside the council, covering a much wider patch, sits the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. It covers six boroughs, Liverpool, Halton, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral, and is led by the directly-elected Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram. This is not a bigger version of the council. It is a separate organisation with a separate, narrower job.

None of this is the same as the Lord Mayor, a ceremonial one-year civic post with no budget powers, or the old directly-elected City Mayor role, which the council scrapped in 2023. Both are covered properly in our mayor guide linked above.

What the council actually controls

Liverpool City Council runs the services most people mean when they say "the council": bin collections, council tax, social care, most planning applications, most local roads, libraries, and schools admissions. If it happens on your street and it is not a bus or a motorway, it is almost certainly a council matter, and your ward councillor is the fastest way in.

What the Combined Authority controls

Illustration of local problems sorted into council, city-region and Westminster trays.
Council issue, city-region issue, Westminster issue. Sending it to the right place matters.

The Combined Authority, run through the Metro Mayor's office, holds transport, adult skills and apprenticeships, and regeneration and housing strategy across all six boroughs. In March 2024 the city region was confirmed as eligible for Level 4 devolution powers, giving it more direct say over transport and skills funding than most other regions.

Buses, Merseyrail investment and regional transport strategy sit here. Your bin does not. This is the single biggest source of confused complaints in the city: people ring the council about a bus route, or ring the Combined Authority about a missed collection, and both calls go nowhere.

Where MPs fit

Liverpool has five MPs, covering Walton, Riverside, Wavertree, West Derby and the Garston area, all Labour since the July 2024 general election. The council keeps a current list of Liverpool MPs. MPs sit in Parliament and make national law. They can write to the council on a resident's behalf and often do, but they have no power to overrule a council decision on planning, council tax or bins. If your MP could fix your pothole directly, they would not need a council at all.

The years the government sent help

Illustration of a magnifying glass over Liverpool council papers and a ward map, suggesting scrutiny and accountability.
Liverpool City Council was under statutory intervention from June 2021 to June 2024.

In March 2021, an independent government-commissioned inspection, known as the Caller Report, found serious failures of governance at Liverpool City Council, including weak scrutiny and a culture of intimidation. That is not an allegation. It is the finding of a published government report.

Following that report, the government appointed commissioners who, from June 2021 until 9 June 2024, held direct powers over specific council functions: planning, highways, regeneration, property management, and oversight of senior staff appointments. Liverpool City Council's own commissioners archive explains what they covered. That is a serious intervention, but it was not the government taking over the council. Elected councillors kept running everything else throughout, and the council took functions back progressively before the commissioners' term expired.

Why so few people vote

Only 28.1% of eligible voters turned out for the May 2023 all-out council election, the one that decided every seat on the council under the new boundaries. The council's election results pages show turnout by contest, ranging from just over 10% in some wards to nearly 45% in others.

Put plainly: roughly seven in ten people who could have voted for the people now running bins, planning and social care did not bother. As of that election, the seat count was Labour 61, Liberal Democrats 15, Green 3, Community Independents 3 and Liberal 3. Whatever you think of that result, most residents had no say in it at all. Low turnout is not a personality flaw in Scousers. It is what happens when nobody explains who these elections are actually for.

Who to contact about what

Illustration of a Liverpool resident using a contact checklist for local government problems.
The useful bit: match the problem to the right office before you start chasing.

A quick matrix for the next time something goes wrong.

  • Missed bin collection: Liverpool City Council, via your ward councillor if it becomes a pattern.
  • Pothole on a normal street or A-road within the city: Liverpool City Council.
  • Pothole on a motorway or trunk road, such as the M62 or M57: National Highways, not the council.
  • Bus route, fares or Merseyrail issue: Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, the Metro Mayor's patch.
  • Planning objection on a development near you: Liverpool City Council's planning department, via your ward councillor for support.
  • A national law or policy issue: your local MP.
  • General local casework, from noise complaints to housing queries: start with your ward councillor. That is the job.

How to find your ward and councillor

Liverpool City Council runs a postcode lookup tool that tells you your ward and your current councillors' contact details. It takes about thirty seconds and it is the single most useful bookmark in this article. The council's voting and elections pages are also useful if you are not sure which patch you live in.

Three layers, three jobs, three separate people to contact. None of them are interchangeable, and none of them will thank you for guessing.

Sources