Sheffield City Council

Sheffield City Council is the local authority for the City of Sheffield, a metropolitan borough with city status in South Yorkshire, England. The council consists of 84 councillors, elected to represent 28 wards, each with three councillors. It is currently under no overall control, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party each holding chair positions in a proportionate number of committees.

The town of Sheffield was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1843. The borough was run by the Corporation of Sheffield, also known as the town council. When elected county councils were established in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, Sheffield was considered large enough to run its own county-level services and so it was made a county borough, independent from West Riding County Council. The town was awarded city status in 1893.

In 1974 the county borough of Sheffield was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, being replaced by a larger metropolitan borough of Sheffield, covering the area of the former county borough plus the abolished Stocksbridge Urban District and the parishes of Bradfield and Ecclesfield. Sheffield's city status was extended to cover the whole area of the new borough.

From 1974 to 1986 Sheffield was a district-level authority, with county-level services provided by South Yorkshire County Council. In 1986, the abolition of metropolitan county councils saw Sheffield City Council become a unitary authority, the modern equivalent of the county borough it had been before 1974.

Since 2014 the council has been a constituent member of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (called the Sheffield City Region until 2021), led by the directly elected Mayor of South Yorkshire since 2018.

In April 2014, the Sheffield City Council voted to recognize the right to self-determination of Somaliland, an autonomous region in northwestern Somalia, the first city council to do so. The gesture is purely ceremonial and carries no legal weight. The UK government and the international community officially recognise Somaliland as a part of Somalia.

In August 2019, a governance petition was submitted to the council, asking for a referendum on changing the council's governance system. The petition, organised by the Sheffield community group It's Our City!, was signed by over 26000 people (approximately 6.6% of the Sheffield City Council electorate). In September 2019 this petition was accepted as valid under the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, forcing the council to hold a referendum on changing the council's executive arrangements from the Leader and Cabinet system to a Committee system. The referendum was postponed from May 2020 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and took place on 6 May 2021, with 65% voting for change to a Committee system.

In 2023 the council leader Terry Fox stood down as leader at the request of the national Labour Party, amid controversy around the council's response to the Sheffield street tree scandal.