The council is a powerful organisation comprising heads of rural committees which represent villages and market towns.

[9]: 98  The committees were, in any event, only representative of indigenous villagers, excluding large swathes of the New Territories population right from the Kuk's earliest days.

[9]: 97 After becoming a statutory advisory body, the Kuk met regularly with the New Territories Administration to discuss local issues and influence government policies.

[5]: 380 As part of administrative reforms proposed by McKinsey in 1974, the colonial government established the position of Secretary for the New Territories to communicate with the Kuk and prepare for development of the area.

[11] In October 2023, local news reported that the Kuk did not support building public housing on parts of the Hong Kong Golf Club.

[13] The Kuk threatened to ask Beijing for help if an appeal to the April 2019 ruling was not granted, in addition to spending HKD $30M on the first round of judicial review.