Hampshire County Council (HCC) is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Hampshire in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are district councils, and town and parish councils. The county council has 78 elected councillors.

Hampshire County Council is currently controlled by the Conservative Party.

The council is responsible for public services such as education, transport, strategic planning, emergency services, social services, public safety and waste disposal.

The County Council has an award-winning in-house architectural design studio, which has a particular reputation for good school design. They are notable by being the only sizeable public-sector county council architecture studio remaining in the UK, following many years of outsourcing to the private sector.

District and borough councils that govern within Hampshire include:

The most recent Hampshire County Council elections were held on 4 June 2009.

At the 2009 local elections for Hampshire County Council, the Conservative Party had a 47.72% share of the votes, the Liberal Democrats had 32.89% and Labour 7.07%. As a result, 51 Conservatives, 25 Liberal Democrats, one Labour and one Community Campaign councillor sit on the County Council.

Hampshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Hampshire in cricket's County Championship. The club was founded in 1863 as a successor to the Hampshire county cricket teams and has played at the Antelope Ground from then until 1885, before moving to the County Ground where it played from then until 2000, before moving to the purpose built Rose Bowl on the edge of Southampton. In 1864 the club played its first-class debut, losing to Sussex at the Antelope Ground. Hampshire was never a champion county before the County Championship was officially founded in 1889, more often than not the results for the county were poor. As a result of this it lost its first-class status in 1885, but regained it 1895, the season in which it first featured in the County Championship. The club won its first title in 1961 and its second in 1973. These remain its only Championship titles.

Hampshire played their first one-day match in 1963, but didn't win their first one-day silverware until 1975 when the club won Sunday League. The club won the Sunday League twice more in 1978 and 1986. It has twice won the Benson & Hedges Cup in 1988 and 1991, the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy once in 2005 and the Friends Provident Trophy once in 2009. Having first played Twenty20 cricket in 2003, Hampshire won the Friends Provident t20 in 2010. The County Championship was restructured in 2000, and at the end of the 2002 Hampshire was relegated for the first time. The club remained in the second division for three seasons and since 2004 had competed in the top tier. However, the club was relegated once more in 2011.

Hampshire (ⁱ/ˈhæmpʃɪər/ or /ˈhæmpʃər/; abbreviated Hants) is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, the former capital city of England. Hampshire is the most populous ceremonial county in the United Kingdom and if excluding newly formed metropolitan counties such as the West Midlands, Hampshire would be the most populous county in the whole of the United Kingdom. Hampshire is notable for housing the birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force. The ceremonial county borders Dorset to the west, Wiltshire to the north-west, Berkshire to the north, Surrey to the north-east, and West Sussex to the east. The southern boundary is the coastline of the English Channel and The Solent.

Hampshire is the largest county in South East England and the third largest shire county in the United Kingdom despite losing more land than any other English county during the Local Government Act 1972 boundary changes. At its greatest size in 1889, Hampshire was the fifth largest county in England. It now has an overall area of 3,700 square kilometres (1,400 sq mi), and measures approximately 86 kilometres (53 mi) east–west and 76 kilometres (47 mi) north–south.

A county council is the elected administrative body governing an area known as a county. This term has slightly different meanings in different countries.

County councils were formed in the United Kingdom in the late 19th century. In the various constituent countries of the United Kingdom councils had different powers and different memberships. Following local government reforms in the 1970s, county councils no longer exist in Scotland or Northern Ireland. In England they generally form the top level in a two-tier system of administration; in Wales they are unitary authorities.

In England county councils were introduced in 1889, and reformed in 1974. Since the mid 1990s a series of local government reorganisations has seen a reduction in the number of county councils as unitary authorities have been established in a number of areas. County councils are very large employers with a great variety of functions including education (schools and youth services), social services, highways, fire and rescue services, libraries, waste disposal, consumer services and town and country planning. Until the 1990s they also ran colleges of further education and the careers services. That decade also saw the privatisation of some traditional services, such as highway maintenance, cleaning and school meals.

Roy Perry (born 12 February 1943) is a British politician.

Perry graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in Government and Politics and was formerly a senior lecturer in Politics before entering the profession himself as a member of Test Valley Borough Council from 1979 to 1994. He was leader between 1985 and 1994. During this time, Perry contested the seat of Swansea West for the Conservatives in the 1992 general election. He was elected a Member of the European Parliament for the Wight and Hampshire South constituency in the 1994 European Parliament election and was re-elected under the new system of proportional representation in the 1999 European Parliament election.

In December 2002, Perry was placed sixth on the Conservative list for the 2004 elections. Four Conservative MEPs were elected in the region so Perry was not.

Since the 2004 European Parliament election, Perry has concentrated on his roles as Director of the Trident Trust, Trustee of the Hampshire Museums Service, and Director of the Isle of Wight Partnership. He is also the Deputy Leader of Hampshire County Council.