Target database: District/Unitary Authority Councillors

Summary

Name	UK / English : District/Unitary Authority Councillors
Major update schedule	Quarterly
Records	~18,252 (varies)
Region	UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland)
Single or multi target?	Returns multiple targets per postcode
Can be used for Tweet-to-Target pages?	No
Can be used for Click-to-Call pages?	No
Can be used for Political Broadcasts?	Yes
Can be used for Data Mapping?	No
Allows for target setting filtering?	No

This database contains the UK’s district, unitary or borough councillors per ward.

It can be used for email-to-target pages and for political broadcasts.

Description

In the UK, one or more councillors represent a “ward”, which are the primary unit of electoral districts.

Some wards are represented by county councillors, and some by district, unitary or London borough councillors. Some have both kinds (known as two-tier councils).

This is a good guide if you want to know more: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-government-structure-and-elections

The supporter’s postcode is mapped, via the email-to-target page, to a ward area in this database and multiple targets displayed for the supporter’s target email.

If you wish to target both kinds of councillor, you have two options:

Because we provide both the District/Unitary Authority Councillors and County Councillors databases, you can add both to an email-to-target page (by having target settings as multi-database). This page would then use both as its targets. It means that two-tier postcodes would list both kinds as its targets.
You can use the Councillors Upper Tier database which can be used on its own. For postcodes that have a two-tier council this will return their county councillors.

Related databases

These databases handle the county councillor and district/unitary/borough councillors.

UK / English : District/Unitary Authority Councillors – this database contains the UK’s district, unitary or borough councillors per ward
UK / English : County Councillors – this database returns targets for wards represented by a county council
UK / English : Councillors – Upper Tier – this database combines both district/unitary/borough councillors and county councillors. For postcodes that have a two-tier council this will return their county councillors.
UK / English : District/Unitary/Borough Council Leaders – this database returns the district/unitary/borough council leader (one target)
UK / English : County Council Leaders – this database returns the county council leader (one target)
UK / English : Council Leaders – Upper Tier – this database combines both district/unitary/borough councillors and county councillors and returns a single council leader. For postcodes that have a two-tier council this will return their county council leader.

These databases are subsets of the other databases:

UK / English : Northern Ireland District Councillors
UK / English : England Non-Metropolitan District Councillors
UK / English : England Scotland Wales Unitary Authority Councillors
UK / English : London Borough Councillors
UK / English : England Metropolitan Councillors

We do not provide a candidate database in the case of elections.

Use these pages to get an idea of the kinds of contacts that are returned:

District/Unitary Authority Councillors
County Councillors
Combined (multi-database – the two above)
Councillors Upper Tier
District/Unitary/Borough Council Leaders

Structure

Column name	What it holds
Salutation	The complete salutation of the target, e.g. “Dear Councillor Saliagopoulos,”
Organization	The name of the district, unitary or borough region, e.g. “Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council”, “Eden District Council”, “City of Wolverhampton Council” or “London Borough of Southwark”
Position held	Not used
Title	The target’s title, e.g. “Councillor”
First name	The target’s first name
Last name	The target’s last name
Suffix	The target’s suffix if appropriate
Phone number	The phone number of the target if available
Fax number	Not used
Various address fields	The address fields of the target if available
Party image	Not used
Biography 1	The ward name, e.g. “St Giles” or “Central Hove”
Biography 2	Not used
Twitter Handle (Biography 3)	Not used
Biography 4	The type of area, one of District Council (Northern Ireland), English Non-Metropolitan District, English Unitary Authority”, London Borough, Metropolitan Council (England), Scottish Unitary Authority, Welsh Unitary Authority
Biography 5	Not used
Biography 6	Not used
Biography 7	The UK region (one of East Midlands, Eastern, London, North East, North West, Northern Ireland, Scotland, South East, South West, Wales, West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humber)
Party (Biography 8)	The target’s political party (one of Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, Conservative, DUP, Green Party, Independent, Labour, Labour/Co-operative, Liberal Democrat, Other, Plaid Cymru, Political Affiliation Not Specified, PUP, Residents Association/Ratepayer, SDLP, Sinn Féin, SNP, UKIP, UUP)