Community Councils are statutory bodies whose role is to represent their community at local authority level on matters such as planning applications and local services.

All community councils in Scotland are non-party political and non-sectarian and all must have a constitution which sets out issues such as the frequency of meetings, office bearers, method of election, finance and standing orders.

The two Acts of Parliament governing community councils allow them to take any action they deem appropriate to improve their community.

Whist they are statutory bodies, they are not another tier of local Government. They are citizen's forums and anyone within their community council area can stand for election or, can be co-opted onto the council by agreement of other members.

In Portpatrick, the community council plays a key role in improving the life of this wonderful area and much of our work will be available for anyone to see on this website.