The county council was abolished in 1998 and the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead took on county-level services, making it a unitary authority.

Approximately half of its flow through the borough has a bypass and seasonally-variable flood relief channel, the Jubilee River.

Much of the borough is covered by civil parishes, which form an additional tier of local government for their areas, although the two largest towns of Maidenhead and Windsor are unparished.

[8] The Royal Borough is represented at Westminster by two members of parliament: Jack Rankin of the Conservative Party (for Windsor) and Joshua Reynolds of the Liberal Democrats (for Maidenhead).

Small parts of other districts, notably Slough and Wokingham have intermittently been included in each constituency to prevent malapportionment which is a definition of boundaries which causes any MP to serve a significantly different number of potential voters (electors) than the others.

[9][10] The irregular, elongated shape of the Windsor seat being the south-east half of the Borough has been criticised by academics who noted the net changes which the Heath administration led through Parliament in 1972, implemented in 1974, intensified difference.