The Borough of Hartlepool is a local government district with borough status in County Durham, England. Since 1996 Hartlepool Borough Council has been a unitary authority, which gives it both district-level and county-level functions; it is independent of Durham County Council. It is named after its largest settlement, Hartlepool, where the council is based. The borough also includes a rural area to the west of the town. The population of the borough at the 2021 census was 92,571, of which over 95% (87,995) lived in the built-up area of Hartlepool itself.

Since 2016 the council has been a member of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, which has been led by the directly elected Tees Valley Mayor since 2017. The Hartlepool constituency has been coterminous with the borough since 1983.

The neighbouring districts are the County Durham district and Stockton-on-Tees; the borough also adjoins Redcar and Cleveland across the mouth of the River Tees.

The town of Hartlepool was an ancient borough, having been granted a charter by King John in 1200.^[2][3] It was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1850. This borough covered the relatively small area now known as the Headland, where the original town was located.^[4]

The new town of West Hartlepool was laid out from the 1840s on land outside Hartlepool's historic borough boundaries, in the neighbouring parish of Stranton. A body of improvement commissioners was established to administer the new town in 1854.^[5] The commissioners' district was enlarged in 1883 to include Seaton Carew.^[6] The commissioners were superseded in 1887, when West Hartlepool was incorporated as a separate borough.^[7] In 1902 West Hartlepool was elevated to become a county borough, making it independent from Durham County Council.^[8]

After several unification efforts starting in 1902, the two boroughs of Hartlepool and West Hartlepool merged into a single county borough in 1967, also absorbing at the same time the neighbouring parish of Seaton (being the residual rural part of the old parish of Seaton Carew) to provide coastal land for industrial development.^[9][10]

The borough was reformed and enlarged on 1 April 1974, by the merger of the previous county borough of Hartlepool, along with the parishes of Brierton, Claxton, Dalton Piercy, Elwick, Elwick Hall, Greatham, Hart and Newton Bewley, from the Stockton Rural District, all of which had been part of the administrative county of Durham. The enlarged borough was transferred at the same time from County Durham to the new non-metropolitan county of Cleveland.^[11]

Cleveland was abolished in 1996 following the Banham Review, which gave unitary authority status to its four districts, including Hartlepool. The borough was restored to County Durham for ceremonial purposes at the same time, but as a unitary authority it is independent from Durham County Council.^[12] Hartlepool continues to share certain local services with the other former Cleveland boroughs, including the Cleveland Police and Cleveland Fire Brigade.

Hartlepool Borough Council provides both county-level and district-level services. There are also nine civil parishes in the borough, which form a second tier of local government for their areas; the rest of the borough is an unparished area.^[15]

Since 2016 the council has been a member of the Tees Valley Combined Authority.^[16]

In May 2021, the four parish councils of Elwick, Hart, Dalton Piercy and Greatham all issued individual votes of no confidence in Hartlepool Borough Council, and expressed their desire to re-join County Durham.^[17] Subsequently quarterly parish liaison meetings were set up between the parish and borough councils, and a new Parish Charter was adopted.^[18]

Settlements in the borough include: