This film is part of Free
The Scottish County Clerk: the unlikely Superhero of local daily life.
This is a ‘day in the life’ look at the duties of a Scottish County Clerk, a bespectacled, even-tempered man with a hat and pipe. The narrator states that ‘a County Clerk is concerned with every single event that happens in the running of the County’ and illustrates the Clerk’s involvement in an incredibly wide range of services. These include: the investigation of a possible cholera outbreak at a port, the local housing programme, fire stations, civil defence, police matters, a site for a new factory, new roads, the replanting of trees, and several more. A recurring theme within the film is the possible closure of a village school, which is resolved happily by the end.
The narrator declares that the County Council ‘carries out the policy laid down by Parliament’, meaning Westminster. Powers in many areas including local government were devolved to the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
