It co-governed with varying degrees of input from the civil parish councils and functions increasingly came to be carried out by the newly created Middlesex County Council from 1888: It was named after Staines, the urban district of which bordered it to the west, and bordered that of Sunbury to the south-east.

[2][3] It covered over half of medieval Spelthorne Hundred one of six divisions of the historic county Middlesex.

Indeed, the ineffective taxation and implementation of many such bodies was one of the main prompts for members of Parliament supporting the Local Government Act 1894, which introduced a second tier of local government six years after the deemed success of the administrative county introduction in 1888.

[4][3] Until 1930 the separation of church and state was gradual in this District as this extract from an account of Stanwell's local government history shows: [From] 1836 the [Stanwell] vestry continued to meet, generally with the vicar presiding, to elect parish officers and raise rates.

The council was an active one; it intervened with partial success in the negotiations for the building of the reservoirs and was concerned in the provision of allotments in 1918 and of a recreation ground in 1927.