Elected county councils were established in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, taking over administrative functions previously carried out by unelected magistrates at the quarter sessions.

[9] In 2009 the Liberal Democrat MP Dan Rogerson introduced a bill in parliament seeking to take power from Whitehall and regional quangos and pass it to Cornwall Council, with the intention of making the council an assembly similar to the National Assembly for Wales.

[10] In November 2010 the Prime Minister, David Cameron, suggested in comments to the local press that his government would "devolve a lot of power to Cornwall – that will go to the Cornish unitary authority.

"[11] In 2011, the then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he would meet a cross party group, including the six Cornish MPs, to look at whether more powers could be devolved to Cornwall.

[35] The quarter sessions which preceded the county council had generally met at the Shire Hall in Bodmin.

[40] Another of the projects is the proposed creation of a National Library of Cornwall to resolve inadequacies with the current storage of archives.

[41] It is hoped that this will bring some important documents concerning Cornish history back to Cornwall as well as providing better public access to those records already held.

[43] The council took an active role in the promotion of the options for registering Cornish ethnicity and national identity on the 2011 UK Census.

[44] The Cornish people were finally recognised as a National Minority by the British Government on 24 April 2014 and incorporated into the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities giving the Cornish the same status as the United Kingdom's other Celtic peoples, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.

The protocol aims to allow the two regions to work more closely on topics of common interest and engage in a knowledge exchange with the possibility of jointly applying for European funding.

Cornwall comes under the Atlantic Arc Commission sub-division of 30 regions, which has been used to advertise the potential of renewable energy off the Cornish coast to Europe.

[51] Various fact finding missions have been organised by councillors to study how other regions and small nations of Europe govern themselves successfully.

Independent councillor, Bert Biscoe, organised a fact finding mission to Guernsey in 2011 to see if the island's system of government could be adapted to work in Cornwall.

The council is also working with the NHS and Eden to tackle fuel poverty by creating a Cornwall Together co-op which will buy electricity at lower-than-market prices.