Urswick Parish Council is made up of a total of eight Councillors, two representing Bardsea Ward, one representing Stainton with Adgarley Ward and five representing Urswick Ward.

The Council meets once every six weeks on Thursday evenings with the venue rotating between Urswick Sunday School, Bardsea Schoolroom and Stainton Recreation Hall.  Meetings normally commence at 7:30 pm, but exceptions do occur, typically when a speaker has been invited to address the Council on a particular topic.  The agenda, which is accessible from this page,  should be checked for details.

The parish is within the local government jurisdiction of South Lakeland District Council based at Kendal and Cumbria County Council based at Carlisle.  Both of these councils are in the early phase of transition as they respond to the 2006 Government White Paper, 'Strong and Prosperous Communities'.  The responses to that White Paper from both levels of local government indicated an enthusiastic desire to delegate appreciably more decision making to parish councils.  In principle this is a proposal welcomed by Urswick Parish Council subject to appropriate resources, including training, being provided and a realistic timescale for implementation.

Since May 2008 the Parish is served by three District Councillors and one County Councillor.  This results from preceeding work by the Electoral Commissioners, and is the outcome of current legislation which is primarily based on arithmetic equality of representation across the wards of the District Council.  The parish ward of Urswick has two District Councillors who represent the District ward of Mid Furness; whilst the other two parish wards of Bardsea and Stainton with Adgarley share a District Councillor with the whole of neighbouring Aldingham Parish, the collective making up the District ward of Low Furness. 

The Parish Council is committed to providing ever improving representation of its parishioners to higher levels of governance and to enhancing the care which the built and landscape assets of the parish deserve.  To this end a number of concurrent programmes are in hand.  In 2006 the parish published edition 1 of its Parish Plan and work is ongoing to implement the action items which it contains.  Work in producing the Parish Plan has been followed by the development of a Village Design Statement which will be published in 2008.  The desire exists to be accredited as a Quality Parish within the terms of the Government's Quality Parish and Town Council scheme.  This objective is repeatedly impeded by membership of the council having to be topped-up by co-opted members, such that the Government's required threshold for the proportion of elected members fails to be achieved.  However, the council continues to work to put in place all criteria that are within its control and required in order to secure Quality Parish status.  This website bears testimony to the council's commitment to improving communications with its parishioners and encouraging their engagement in matters affecting this ancient parish.