Stonehouse community council was organised by an election held on 5th June 1977.  The village at this time was split into four areas and three candidates came forward for area 1, four candidates for area 2, one candidate for area 3 and five for area 4. elections were held for areas two and four.

On Monday 13th June 1977 the first official meeting of the elected community council members took place. The scanned first minutes of the community council can be viewed by clicking scanned original first minute.pdf19121.pdf.

BACKGROUND TO COMMUNITY COUNCILS

They were originally created by the Local governemtn (Scotland) Act 1973 and were intended to bridge the gap between local authourities and local communities and to help make local authourities and other public bodies aware of the opinions , needs and preferences of the communities that they represent.

The 1973 act required local authourities to introduce community council schemes for their area and gave them a large degree of freedom to tailor the scheme to the particular circumstances of their area. Currently there are around 1200 active community councils in Scotland and these only exist where volunteers are prepared to represent their community in this way. Some areas in scotland and South Lanarkshire have no community council representation.

The primary purpose of the community council is to ascertain and express the views of the community they represent, however in addition to this primary role many community councils involve themselves in a wide range of other activities for the benefit of their community.