The first county council for Anglesey was created in 1889 under the
Local Government Act 1888, which established elected county councils to take over the administrative functions of the
quarter sessions. The original county council did not include "Isle of" in its name, simply being called "Anglesey County Council". That county council and the
administrative county of Anglesey were abolished in 1974 under the
Local Government Act 1972. Anglesey was merged with the mainland areas of
Caernarfonshire,
Merioneth, and part of
Denbighshire to become a new county called
Gwynedd. A lower-tier
district was created covering Anglesey, with its council taking over district-level functions from Anglesey's previous eight district councils, which were abolished at the same time: •
Aethwy Rural District •
Amlwch Urban District •
Beaumaris Municipal Borough •
Holyhead Urban District •
Llangefni Urban District •
Menai Bridge Urban District •
Twrcelyn Rural District •
Valley Rural District The new district was awarded
borough status. Uniquely among the 37 districts created in Wales in 1974 it was given a hyphenated name combining both the area's Welsh and English names: "Ynys Môn-Isle of Anglesey". The council was therefore called "Ynys Môn-Isle of Anglesey Borough Council". Local government across Wales was reorganised again in 1996 under the
Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, which replaced the previous two tier system of counties and districts with "principal areas" (each designated either a "county" or a "
county borough"), whose councils perform the functions previously divided between the county and district councils. The pre-1996 borough of Ynys Môn-Isle of Anglesey was reconstituted as a county, and so gained administrative independence from Gwynedd. Unlike in 1974, the 1994 Act gave separate English and Welsh names for each principal area, specifying that the new county was to be named "Anglesey" in English and "Sir Fôn" in Welsh. During the transition to the new system, the shadow authority requested a change of name in both languages, to "Isle of Anglesey" in English and "Sir Ynys Môn" in Welsh. The government confirmed the change with effect from 2 April 1996, one day after the new council came into being. Since 1996 the local authority has therefore been "Isle of Anglesey County Council" in English, and "Cyngor Sir Ynys Môn" in Welsh.
External supervision The
Wales Audit Office described the new council of having a "history of conflict and inappropriate behaviour" from the outset, with two public interest reports published in 1998 and a further three reports into the behaviour by 2001.
David Bowles was imposed on the council by the
Welsh Government and paid via a recruitment company. He became Wales' most expensive public sector worker at the time. Bowles sacked two members of the ruling council group, and the education and leisure head was forced to resign. with elections ultimately delayed, meaning they took place a year after the rest of Wales, pending a new electoral system. Of those staff that assessed their language skills in 2016–2017, 79% could speak Welsh fluently.
Hacking In February 2019 the council reported that
North Korea was likely to have been behind a
cyberattack on its systems, carried out through a proxy
ISP (IP) address based in Japan. Experts suggested that Anglesey was not likely to have been the specific target, with the hackers engaged in a broader attack on
UK government infrastructure.
Island Forum In 2022, as part of the
Levelling Up White Paper, an "Island Forum" was proposed, which would allow local policymakers and residents in Anglesey to work alongside their counterparts in
Orkney,
Shetland, the
Western Isles and the
Isle of Wight on common issues, such as broadband connectivity, and provide a platform for them to communicate directly with the government on the challenges island communities face in terms of levelling up. The council has been a member of the
Islands Forum since 2022. In June 2023, the deputy council leader Ieuan Williams resigned after saying "all Tories should be shot". ==Political control==