It meets at Liverpool Town Hall and has its main offices at the Cunard Building.

It was then governed by a body formally called the 'mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough of Liverpool', generally known as the corporation or town council.

As part of the same reforms, the borough boundaries were enlarged to match the larger Liverpool parliamentary constituency, which had been expanded in 1832 to include the neighbouring parishes of Everton and Kirkdale and part of West Derby.

[12] The city boundaries were enlarged on several occasions, notably gaining Wavertree, Walton and parts of Toxteth and West Derby in 1895, Fazakerley in 1905, Allerton, Childwall and Woolton in 1913, the rest of West Derby in 1928, and Speke in 1932.

[13] Liverpool's borough and city statuses and its lord mayoralty passed to the reformed district and its council.

Under their leadership the council attempted to challenge the national government on several issues, including refusing to set a budget in 1985.

The leadership of the national Labour Party was drawn into the controversy, ultimately expelling members of Militant, including the council's deputy leader, Derek Hatton, in 1986.

[25] In December 2020, the elected mayor, Joe Anderson, was arrested as part of an anti-corruption investigation.

[28] On 24 March 2021, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Robert Jenrick, announced that he was appointing commissioners to oversee some of the authority's functions for at least 3 years.

This was following an investigation, commissioned in December 2020 that found there were "multiple apparent failures" and a "deeply concerning picture of mismanagement" in the council.

Following improvements in the council's performance and management, the intervention was then scaled back to less direct supervision, due to last until March 2025.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the council was run by the Conservatives.