It meets at County Buildings in Stafford and has its main offices nearby at Staffordshire Place on Tipping Street.

Elected county councils were created in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, taking over many administrative functions that had previously been performed by unelected magistrates at the quarter sessions.

The first chairman of the council was Dudley Ryder, 3rd Earl of Harrowby, a Conservative peer and former member of parliament.

Territory was also transferred on a number of occasions from Staffordshire to the neighbouring county borough of Birmingham, which gained Harborne in 1891,[7] Handsworth in 1911,[8] and Perry Barr in 1928.

District-level services are provided by the area's eight district councils:[13] Much of the county is also covered by civil parishes, which form a third tier of local government.

[28][29] When the county council was first created in 1889 it met at the Shire Hall in the Market Place in Stafford, which had been completed in 1798.