London's last parish council

BBC article today suggested that a new parish council for Queen's Park would be the first in 50 years. It is actually more like 75 years as the last parish council was abolished in 1936, not in 1965 as implied. But where was this last parish council?

There have been around 55 parish councils in the current area of Greater London. Almost all were created in 1894 and all were gone by 1936. All were situated in what is now Outer London. No mechanism has ever existed before 2007 to create a parish council in Inner London. Parish councils were created systematically in 1894. All of the country was already divided into civil parishes and any that were outside a borough or urban district (the big towns) got a parish council.

As London was expanding the number of parish councils started to decline. This was because when civil parishes became absorbed by boroughs or urban districts they were no longer permitted to have a parish council. The Local Government Act 1929 created a new mechanism - the county review order - which sped up the process of removing parish councils. The trigger for reform was usually an increase in population. In inter-war Outer London it was not uncommon for a parish to have a tenfold increase in population within a decade as suburban housing was constructed.

The loss of a parish council did not always equal a reduction in identity and local decision making. In this period the change from parish council was often a conversion to urban governance to reflect increased population, rather than an amalgamation with an adjacent district. The efficiency consensus that bigger was better had not yet been reached. However some outcomes of the reviews under the 1929 act were that very large urban districts such as Harrow, Hornchurch and Orpington replaced a number of parishes that had each previously enjoyed a parish council.

1934 was a big year for the parish council in Greater London. By the end of the year only one remained. Interestingly it was the now still semi-rural North Ockendon that survived two more years to 1936. The conversion to urban governance was perhaps in anticipation of house building there. In the event the Second World War and the Metropolitan Green Belt kept the suburban sprawl just a few hundred yards from the parish. North Ockendon was further made an anomaly with the construction of the M25 motorway and is now the only part of Greater London outside the limit it forms. It also holds the distinction of being the last place in Greater London to have a parish council from 1894 to 1936.


View North Ockendon in a larger map


Full list of parish councils and dates abolished

Chislehurst	1900
Foots Cray	1902
Feltham	1904
Hayes (Hillingdon)	1904
Ruislip	1904
Arkley	1905
Merton	1907
Yiewsley	1911
Morden	1913
Totteridge	1914
Beddington	1915
Coulsdon	1915
Mitcham	1915
Sanderstead	1915
Wallington	1915
Crayford	1920
Addington	1925
Dagenham	1926
Hornchurch	1926
Northolt	1928
Cowley	1929
Harefield	1929
Hillingdon East	1929
Ickenham	1929
West Drayton	1929
Bedfont	1930
Cranford	1930
East Bedfont	1930
Hanworth	1930
Harlington	1930
Harmondsworth	1930
Edgware	1931
Chelsfield	1934
Cranham	1934
Cudham	1934
Downe	1934
Farnborough	1934
Great Stanmore	1934
Harrow Weald	1934
Havering-atte-Bower	1934
Hayes (Bromley)	1934
Keston	1934
Little Stanmore	1934
Mottingham	1934
Noak Hill	1934
North Cray	1934
Orpington	1934
Pinner	1934
Rainham	1934
St Mary Cray	1934
St Paul's Cray	1934
Upminster	1934
Wennington	1934
West Wickham	1934
North Ockendon	1936

Parish Watch Update

Time has come to update the list of potential community (parish) councils in London. Here are the proposed councils that have been suggested for Greater London in the past few years. Official campaign sites are given where they exist. If you know of any others, do tell me!

Wards in Greater London with community (parish) council proposals (2007-2012)

• Chingford (Waltham Forest)
• Harlesden (Brent)
• Kilburn (Camden)
• London Fields (Hackney)
• Mayfair (Westminster)
• Mitcham (Merton)
• Norton Folgate (Tower Hamlets)
• Queen's Park (Westminster)
• South Bank (Southwark)
• Thamesmead (Greenwich)
• Wapping (Tower Hamlets)

Of these only Queen's Park in Westminster has got to the stage of triggering a community governance review, which is a required precursor to setting up a council.

Low tech version

Milestone

A milestone has been achieved and my research plans have received ethical approval. This means I can start approaching organisations and individuals who might be able to help me answer my research question. My timetable means I will start doing this later in 2012 and will be collecting data through interviews during 2012/2013. Hopefully writing up my thesis in 2014.

Google+

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Parish is a loaded term

An odd tale has been reported about the church leaders setting up a parish council in Mayfair. This is impossible as a parish council is a civil organisation. It isn't clear where the misunderstanding is coming from, either the church leaders, or the Evening Standard reporter, or both. What it does perhaps highlight is the problem with the nomenclature. The word 'parish' is instantly linked to the church, even though the connection between the two organisations has been broken for over 100 years.

Legislation in 1855 broke any connection between the church
of St George Hanover Square and civil administration

Perhaps it was wise that the 2007 legislation that enabled these councils in London made the change to allow them to be called community or neighbourhood councils instead of parish. They already had the right to be called a town council if they so desired. It might be time to drop the 'parish' name altogether, at least for new creations, and in particular in urban areas unfamiliar with the concept of a civil parish. Although it was reported that a 'church parish council' existed in Mayfair until 1899, this is false. Parish councils never existed in central London and even where they did they were never in any way connected to the church.

Reductions to 'top down' community governance arrangements

Southwark is looking to reduce the number of community councils in the borough. This will be achieved by merging Borough & Bankside with Walworth and combining Bermondsey with Rotherhithe.

Rotherhithe features both areas of high deprivation and Docklands development.
Bermondsey includes solidly working class areas and redevelopment closer to London Bridge

This is being done in order to save money. It is part of a trend I have seen across London over time to reduce or entirely eliminate local authority run community governance structures such as 'area committees', 'ward forums' or other devolved arrangements. The savings made are usually tiny, but the real cost is the loss of a method of engagement focussed on the very local.

Prospective council in Harlesden

Parish Watch Updated

This map records areas that are investigating the opportunity to form a local/parish council in London and links to relevant news stories. The areas on the map correspond to wards and do not represent proposed boundaries.

London boroughs reluctant to encourage parish councils

This is an article I wrote for City Mayors.

Since 2007, neighbourhoods in London have the right to form councils responsible for their own community governance. These parish councils, which already exist elsewhere in England, have substantive powers and serve populations of a just a few thousand. Envisaged as a mechanism for residents to take greater control of their lives, there has been a positive response from communities and several new councils are proposed. There appears to be a political consensus on the value of these councils, should communities decide they want one. However, there is apparently no political will to systematically create them across London and existing local authorities are at best indifferent to them. This could potentially mean the communities that need them most will miss out.

Parish councils have existed in rural parts of England since 1894. Their raison d'être was to provide some local control for small communities who received the majority of their local government services from distant county and rural district authorities. As interwar London suburbia expanded across open fields, part of the rural way of life that was swept away were the parish councils, which were all abolished in the outer suburbs by 1935. When Greater London was formally created in 1965 it must have seemed an efficient measure to eliminate parish councils from the legislation, as none had existed for thirty years.

Most of the history of parish councils therefore takes place away from London. Over time they have evolved and are now permitted in urban areas, and their number has been growing since 1974. They are able to go by a variety of names including town, village, community or neighbourhood. The powers available include planning oversight, maintenance of open spaces and provision of community infrastructure. The services they provide are funded by a local tax known as a precept, with a typical charge per household of around £30 ($50) a year. In 2007 the prohibition of parish councils in London was lifted.

There are around ten or so prospective parish councils in Greater London. The vast majority are in the higher density Inner London area. All are at a very early stage in their development, with a proposal for Queen’s Park in northwest London the most advanced and coherent. The process of creation takes at least a year and requires the local authority to undertake a review of governance arrangements. Rich and poor live amongst each other in almost every district of London and the proposed areas on the whole reflect the diversity that is found even in a very small area. A recurring theme in the proposals is a feeling that the existing local authorities, the 32 borough councils, have failed to respond to the needs of a particular area.

Three concerns are voiced by residents in the proposed areas. They are the level of increased taxation, as Londoners already pay a local tax to two existing authorities; the legitimacy of proposed boundaries, as the neighbourhoods in the urban sprawl are not separately defined other than for electoral purposes; and the range of powers that would be available. The Localism Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament, potentially gives parish councils increased powers over planning. It is proposed that the planning system will move from a consultative model where parish councils are a stakeholder in the process to them having direct involvement with the production of neighbourhood plans.

In order to ascertain the likely success of these councils there are a number of places we can look. Firstly the urban fringe around London is almost entirely served by parish councils. Chigwell, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill, all on the London Underground and part of the urban area, have parish councils created relatively recently. There are a scattering of parish councils in the metropolitan areas surrounding Manchester and Birmingham. However, the Buckinghamshire town of Milton Keynes provides the exemplar for the development urban parish councils, with the entire new town covered, following a review by the borough council. The local authority there sees the councils as a way to reinforce community identities and provide a framework for consultation and delivery.

The Milton Keynes experience mirrors the development of community boards in New York. These were systematically created in every part of the city. However, their powers are not as far reaching as those proposed for London and they lack the variable tax raising powers. It is unlikely that the community councils that will be formed in London will be the result of a sweeping reform of community governance, unless a borough council decides to lead the way or the mayor of London is minded to encourage localism of this form. Most likely the development of these councils will be piecemeal and from the bottom up.

London Fields Community Council public meeting

Today I was present at the public meeting to discuss the creation of a community council for the area around London Fields in Hackney. The meeting consisted of a series of presentations and a question and answer session. Of particular interest was a talk about how neighbourhood planning, a feature of the current Localism Bill, could work with a community council. The questions highlighted a range of opinions about the necessity for a community council and the potential role it should play.

First some background. Hackney is one of those areas of London where the smallest unit of local government has been unusually large for some time. The apparently anomalous union with Stoke Newington, which was alluded to in the meeting, has been an intermittent feature of local politics since 1855. Whereas in other areas of London there is a tradition of very small units of local government that have been gradually amalgamated, in Hackney the local face of politics has always been quite large. Or to put it another way, there is no sense of a community council as a means to revert to something that has been lost.

The questions focussed on the usual bones of contention: the precept, boundaries and powers. There appeared to be a three way split forming on the precept: those who thought it was an unnecessary burden, those who thought it was worth paying to get results, and those who wanted it set as low as was possible. Politics in microcosm.

The potential planning power was explained in impressive detail, using the nearby example of Chatsworth Road (@chatsworthroad). I felt that it was perhaps pitched slightly wrongly for the audience, who might have become fatigued by buzzwords and vision, but nonetheless some could see the practical benefits of having some control over planning policy. London Fields is an area of reasonable public transport access and is close to the central London fringe. It is prime for intensification and this is not aligned to community aspirations.

Proposed boundaries of the community council

On boundaries a conversation was clearly started. This could potentially be a thorny issue. London Fields is about as close to the urban core as it is possible to be. Natural boundaries are hard to discern and even using the canal as a southern boundary did not manage to form a consensus. This is a peculiar problem for parish councils in Greater London and is perhaps one that will only ever be fully resolved during the community governance review process which is undertaken by the London borough council.

What struck me about the meeting was how astute the members of the public who came were. They could instantly see the potential pitfalls and the benefits and asked questions accordingly. Some were unconvinced, even after hearing the example of a working parish council outside London and the impressive neighbourhood plan created by Chatsworth Road. What was also clear, as is the case in other meetings elsewhere, is that there are within the community a core of people who genuinely care about where they live and are prepared to make an investment in time and activity. It is unclear if in London Fields a community council will provide a vehicle for their efforts, but based on this starting point, it is certainly possible.

Wapping Town Council proposal

During the summer of 2010 a proposal came about for a town council in Wapping. The proposal seems to have gone cold, with the public meeting held in July 2010 highlighting some particular concerns.

Two problems appear to be specific to Tower Hamlets. Firstly the proposal seems to have become confused and conflated with the creation of a directly elected mayor for the borough. The argument that the town council could be a counterweight to an as yet unelected mayor was not a clear one to grasp in July 2010. Residents were perhaps uneasy about so many changes they did not understand, especially when the matter of costs is broached but not fully elucidated.

More significantly the ghost of the 1980s Liberal Democrat decentralisation of the borough (now reversed) appears not have gone away. There is suspicion voiced in the meeting that this is some sort of "back door" attempt to divide up the borough again. Not that the 1986 decentralisation was that unprecedented. Before 1900 the Wapping area was divided between two fairly small local authorities, the vestry of St George in the East and the board of works of the Limehouse District. But collective memory only goes back so far.

Town Hall of St George in the East

The main problem with this campaign appears to have been getting bogged down in detail too early. On the subject of powers (i.e. benefits) there is a vague promise of oversight over planning, but the extent of the power isn't made clear. The idea that the community can negotiate with Tower Hamlets Council over what services they will run met with scepticism. This distrust of the council could have been capitalised on, but was not. Concrete examples of what the town council could do would probably have helped residents see the potential.

Town Hall of the Limehouse District

Most significant appears to be the precept. Although this is an important consideration in the setting up of a local council, by making it an issue this early, before the services to be provided had been considered, it was a little like putting the cart before the horse. The choice of speakers, that included a local councillor who might feel usurped by the town council, was probably not the best choice at this stage.

In summary, the proposition offered a vague range of services that might become locally provided, with an unspecified level of control and for an unspecified cost. Hardly surprising this did not excite the local population into action. I don't doubt that a local council could be valuable to the community in Wapping, but what this proposal shows is that a well organised campaign is as important as need.

Campaign for a Queen's Park Community Council launch

Today I was lucky enough to attend the launch event for the proposed Queen's Park Community Council.

The campaign to create a statutory community council has come about because the Queen's Park Forum, created by the Paddington Development Trust, is about to have a 100% cut in government funding. The local council proposal is intended to preserve and continue the work undertaken since 2003. It is the most advanced proposal for a community council in London and could be on track to be the first.

There was a good turnout for the launch

The Queen's Park ward of Westminster appears to be one of those neighbourhoods in a local authority area that through accidents of geography and history are left on the sidelines. The area was once administered from Chelsea, three miles away to the south, until in 1900 when it was added to the northern tip of Paddington. Since 1965 it has formed the northwest protrusion of the City of Westminster. Perhaps because of this history or because of political and physical differences with the rest of the borough, it has needed its own voice in order to flourish.

The campaign launch was positive and clear: your community is under threat and a statutory community council could provide a lifeline. The organisers must gather enough signatures (10% of electors) to force Westminster City Council to consider their proposal.

Petition for a community governance review

The Queen's Park proposal has a number of things in its favour. First of all the messy business of boundaries is taken care of. The council will operate in the Queen's Park ward, which is the same area as the forum. Secondly, the existing forum has a track record of achievement and, finally, the networks in the community are already there. The two speakers at the event from the Queen's Park Forum were confident, articulate and proud of what their community had done and what they saw as its future. As they spoke I felt convinced they would succeed.

The campaign is well organised. The message clear, concise and not bogged down in technical specifics. There was photography, media involvement and a sense of occasion was created. The proximity of the impending cuts created a feeling of urgency which is probably an advantage in getting traction. The challenge, of course, is getting the message outside of the room and connecting will all sections of the community, those who don't come to such meetings, and locking them in to the proposal.

Parish Watch

This map records areas that are investigating the opportunity to form a local/parish council in London and links to relevant news stories. The areas on the map correspond to wards and do not represent proposed boundaries.



Update history
15/01/2011 Created
23/01/2011 Added London Fields
10/02/2011 Added Chingford

Localism Bill: Neighbourhood Planning

This is the second in a series looking at various aspects of the Localism Bill.


Just as the Localism Bill removes the regional tier of the planning hierarchy in every region other than London, it also creates a new one: the neighbourhood. Neighbourhood planning authorities are envisaged as either being superimposed on existing structures, so a civil parish could also be a neighbourhood for planning purposes; or as the area of operation of less formal groups designated as "neighbourhood forums". Each will produce a neighbourhood plan.

This will impact on London in a number of ways. Firstly, planning will potentially be split between three tiers of local governance: the mayor, the boroughs and neighbourhoods. Secondly, the planning incentive for forming a parish council will be lost as the enhanced planning powers will be available to any group. Finally, there is potential for the less formal neighbourhood forums to be short-lived or through attrition become dominated by an individual or group.

There are also significant limitations to the neighbourhood plans which may affect their efficacy and attractiveness to communities. They cannot cross borough lines. This is an old restriction, which dates back to local government reforms in the 19th century. It was also a potential problem for the proposal to create a parish council for Thamesmead which straddles Bexley and Greenwich.

However, the most significant limitation of neighbourhood planning in London will most likely be the frustration that communities will have when they realise they must conform to national planning guidelines, the London Plan and their local authority development plan. How much impact will these community groups have, given these restrictions? How will they go about navigating these policy documents? Where will the skills come from? Is their planning experience going to consist of being repeatedly told their planning decisions are invalid?

London in Maps: Inner London boroughs (1900-1965)

The first collection of maps is now available to view. It is a simple one, the 28 boroughs that formed Inner London before 1965 that are now twelve London boroughs. It is worth noting that even in this period some of the boroughs are the result of earlier amalgamations and at the time many covered more than one recognisable community.

Some were very large in terms of population. Wandsworth, for example, peaked at 353,110. Other boroughs closer to the City of London were very small and experienced rapid depopulation as the suburbs in outer London grew. Shoreditch had a population of 111,390 in 1911, reduced to 40,455 in 1961.

The full set of maps is available to view here.

Facebook

I have started a Facebook page for my research on communities and new parish councils in London. Please visit and like. http://goo.gl/s7dIo

Localism Bill: What is a community?

This is the first in a series looking at various aspects of the Localism Bill.

The Localism Bill introduced in this parliament aims to redefine the relationship between local authorities and communities. Reading the Guide to the Localism Bill there is a blurring of language and the word "community" is used vaguely in some instances to mean both local authorities and neighbourhood groups and more specifically in other cases. Although authorities are to be given more powers from the state, the mechanism for local groups to gain new responsibilities is principally through piecemeal leaching of power and challenge to local authorities.

New rights to build local assets, such as libraries, brings the sort of responsibility that would ordinarily be enjoyed by parish councils to less formally structured communities. But how are these groups to be made accountable? How will they be structured? What happens if people move on? Will wealthier areas take control of councils assets, leaving the council to administer the rest? Where is the benefit of forming a parish/local council if the powers are available to less formal groups?

There is a lack of direction in how the coalition government envisages "the community" that it intends to take on these new powers. The previous government was also fairly unclear about its preference for community structure, perhaps this is a continuation of that indifference and an acceptance of plurality. The Localism Bill treats some parish councils more like local authorities than community groups, allowing a veto of 'excessive' council tax precept rises and even extending the general power of competence to some.

Parish/local councils, now permitted almost anywhere in England, would seem the natural vehicle for the localism reform. However, they already suffered from a lack of powers that perhaps made them unattractive to communities. The Localism Bill, by failing to create new powers especially for these accountable groups, restricts their appeal as vehicles for community governance. This could be a missed opportunity to finally recast the parish/local council as an urban solution.

Consensus on local councils in London

Ahead of the Localism Bill introduced in December, confirmation came that the coalition government supports the creation of local councils within Greater London. There appear to be communities in Kilburn, Wapping, the South Bank and Queen's Park that are interested in forming a council, as well as the idea mooted for one in Thamesmead earlier this year. One note of caution, the council proposed for Kilburn, that would cross borough boundaries would not be possible under current legislation. This was also identified as a potential problem for the Thamesmead council.

Case studies required: Where in London will be first to form a local council?

One of the things I would really like to find for my research is a community that wants to form a local council in London. The Local Government and Rating Act 1997 provides a mechanism for an area to petition their local authority to set up a local council. 10% of electors in the proposed area must sign the petition. The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 extends this right to Greater London. With the advent of the "Big Society" I would expect this to be encouraged further.

The intention of the 2007 extension to London was that an urban community such as a housing estate might take up the powers to improve their area. As it is little publicised, I expect it is far more likely that an exclusive inner city enclave might be aware of the opportunity and investigate it futher. There are also places on the London fringe, such as Harefield, North Ockendon or Biggin Hill that have a degree of "separateness" that would make having independent administration attractive, in a similar way to communities on the other side of the Greater London boundary.

The petition is passed to the local authority for consideration and they have a duty to ensure it is a coherent proposal and that it would not adversely affect the rest of their area. The local council can choose to call itself a town, village, parish, neighbourhood or community. The only area so far I have heard this mooted for is Thamesmead in 2009, although this highlighted the problem that local councils cannot cross borough boundaries and Thamesmead is rudely split between Bexley and Greenwich. I'd love to hear about any other communities in London that are considering taking up these powers.

Modernising the local council institution

One of the reasons parish council adoption in London has been slow is because the institution itself is somewhat archaic and the benefits of setting up a council are quickly outweighed by the bureaucracy. The Department for Communities and Local Government has announced changes to the Local Government Act 1894, which is the primary legislation for parish councils.

Parish councils will now be allowed to spend their combined £340million using electronic transfers instead of cheques. Although this is a very small change, it is hopefully indicative of further measures which will make the benefits of setting up parish councils outweigh any perceived disadvantages.

London in maps: population peaks

The London story is one of migration. Not just migration from overseas, but within the UK and especially within London itself. The population of Greater London was in decline from 1939, and only started to pick up again after 1981. However, the population peaks for each borough tell a story in themselves of people moving outwards, deserting the inner core and, come the 1960s and 1970s, leaving London altogether.

The population peaks for each London borough

Big local government: 100 years of history

There is an idea that local government in the past was small and local, responsive to ideas because of tightly drawn boundaries. The figures at first glance bear this out. In 1900 there were 152 local authorities in the area that is now Greater London. By 1950 there were 85 and now we have 32. The City of London itself, like the River Thames, has remained constant.

There was a mean average of 42,000 people per local government area in 1900, which increased to 94,000 in 1950 and now we have around 230,000 per London borough. So the figures suggest that there is a nice narrative about our local democracy getting more remote as the number of authorities reduced. That is until we look at the detail. In 1900 there were two authorities with populations of over 300,000 from a group of 23 that had populations of over 100,000. In 1950 there were six authorities with populations over 200,000 from a group of 31 over with populations over 100,000.

At the other end of the spectrum in 1900 there are 21 authorities with populations under 1,000. Imagine the ratio of population to councillors. This particular anomaly had been cleared up in the 1930s and the minimum had risen to 10,000. Still, a range of 10,000-300,000 indicates a significant lack of consistency in the experience of local democracy in London. Islington had a staggering population of 334,981 in 1900, followed by Lambeth with 301,895 and West Ham with 267,358. Shifts in population from inner to outer London caused Wandsworth to top the population leader board in 1950 with 330,493, followed by Croydon with 249,870 and Islington, with 235,632, was driven into third place.

This data tells me that the histories of the communities in London in terms of the relationship to ‘big’ or ‘small’ local government does not necessarily follow the linear narrative of increasing scale the total figures suggest. Some areas have no real tradition of truly local statutory democracy and I would like to know if less formal community leadership has stepped in to fill the void.

The growing distance from local democracy

One of the things I am looking at right now is how, through the process of improving efficiency by making areas for local government bigger, people have become more and more distant from their local democratic representation.

Take the example of the London Borough of Croydon. In 1900 there were four local authorities covering the area, three parish councils and a borough council. I should make it clear they didn’t have parity of status, or provide the same services and there was a terrific imbalance between their populations. In fact the arrangement was more an accident of history than of any purposeful design. However, it meant that in 1900 Coulsdon (population 42,753) had its own governance separate from Sanderstead (20,940) and Croydon (190,684).

1900

1935

1965

By 1935 there were only two local authorities covering the same area and in 1965 there is one. This change meant that the population of the smallest council area Coulsdon residents elected local representation to increased by 175% from 1900 to 1935 and 440% from 1935 to 1965. In this context it is perhaps easy to understand why these amalgamations were often opposed locally, and why community groups such as the Old Coulsdon Residents' Association (1936) were set up.

What I hope to find out is what the experience of being made more distant from local democracy was like and what other effects this had.

If I knew then what I know now…

If you are considering doing a PhD here is the advice I would give myself a year or so ago: start early. It is tougher than you might think to organise funding and a supervisor at the same institution. If you are doing a masters degree now, you need to be sorting out the PhD proposal and funding before you start your masters research proposal.

The first thing you should do is chew the ears off the relevant research staff at your university. They will tell you where the best places and people are for your area of interest. You need to be very open minded about what they tell you and when they suggest Prof X at some university in the outer reaches of northern England, don’t immediately dismiss it. Follow up every opportunity, to see where it goes.

Academics are a funny bunch with a weird network structure. Some have direct connections with each other, but others only know of each other through reading published papers. If you follow up the suggestion of Prof X you may find that he isn’t interested in your research but knows someone closer to home that is. This really is one resource I found in abundance. Academics know it is tough to find supervisors and more often than not are happy to point you in the right direction.

If you don’t have access to academics to help you face to face, you need to get started by trawling through university websites. This can be quite painful as academic websites are disorganised. What I found was the best way to search was to use the “ site: “ operator in Google search with the website domain of the university. For example, when searching for social science supervisors at LSE I used “social science” supervisor professor site:lse.ac.uk

Don’t be blinded by funding. There is no point applying where there is money available if you do not fit in with the research area specified. No amount of bending the truth will make your research into recycling in the Paris suburbs sound like it is related to health outcomes amongst the rural poor. You will either be found out in interview of you will waste your time applying. Otherwise you might find that you end up doing research that isn't your own and doesn’t really interest you.

Have a research proposal of no more than 200 words ready and a paragraph that succinctly summarises it. Send the paragraph, not the proposal to the contacts you uncover. If they want more they will let you know and it gives you the opportunity to monitor for feedback and incorporate it into your proposal. Don’t bother with anything longer at this stage as you will need to rewrite and expand your proposal for every application anyway later.

Focus on the research council funding. It is your best chance at getting your fees paid. Funding is released around December and then throughout the following year. There is usually a really short period from when it is announced to the deadline. You can use jobs.ac.uk to get alerts as funding in your area becomes available. The research council websites are really complex and it is worth asking your potential supervisor or the course administrator for help.

Finally, don’t just accept a supervisor because they are prepared to work with you. Evaluate their interest in your research. Think about what they are like as a person and how likely you are to still be getting on well in three, four or five years’ time. It is easy to focus on funding, but a well funded PhD with a disinterested supervisor won’t be that much fun at all.

Organised research: the geeky solution

Aside from the sheer amount of reading to be done, one of the most troubling aspects of extended research is how to organise your notes. An annotated bibliography is the standard written way to list all your sources with a concise critical analysis of no more than a paragraph per source. I’m still at the identifying sources stage, making links between authors and concepts, so although I can make a start on this, I need something more flexible to organise my ideas. I think I’ve worked out it is essential to use technology in some way.

So, I’m trying something extremely geeky. I’ve downloaded and installed MediaWiki and have been using that. Installation took me around 30 minutes. It was much faster than I expected with fewer problems than anticipated. It requires SQL which I had already installed for some other project and PHP which was easy enough to get hold of. If these things sound alien, don’t worry you don’t actually have to do anything much beyond following a few instructions to install them.

So what is a wiki? Essentially it is a group of webpages that are very easy to edit. The key factor is hyperlinking is incredibly easy. If I want to link to the page on William Robson I just enclose his name with [[ ]], like this: [[William Robson]]. If that page does not exist yet I follow the link that is created and start typing; zero setup required. On the Robson page I can then link to each of his works, create notes and summaries; and crucially, keep track of where the source is available should I need it again.

One of my main resources will be the LSE Library at which I thankfully have alumni borrowing rights. Unfortunately at other libraries, such as the British Library, I will have to make all my notes onsite. They also have draconian rules about what you can take into the building itself – no pens for example – so I will be able to log in to my server at home via a laptop and update the relevant pages from there. The benefits of being able to access all my notes anywhere are also obvious. No excuse for not making use of all available time!

> Enter the title here <

Although at an early stage, I'm steadily moving towards the detailed proposal that is required six months into my programme. In the meantime, I need to put a document together for the next meeting with my supervisor to summarise where I am at. I have identified some large chunks of research I want to do and have an over-arching idea of what I want to achieve. As I start to put my document together, I realise that it really needs a title.

A title would help me out when I’m describing to others what my research is about. I don’t need to pick the final set-in-stone title of my thesis now, but a working title would help me focus my mind, convey to my supervisor and others where this is going, and fill a blank space on the page.

Interestingly, I am finding it quite difficult to come up with something concise and catchy that summarises my research. I had no trouble identifying resources I will use or planning research I will undertake, but distilling it all into a title is proving troublesome. I think it is because my goals are still fairly vague and I feel like don’t want to commit myself to one path.

The vague “Community leadership in London” is my first instinct or perhaps the more stuffy “Parish councils in Greater London”. Ideally I would like to make it a question, but I am possibly getting ahead of myself. Although I have a good idea I have not decided exactly what my research questions will be. That said, it is a working title and doesn’t commit me to anything so I think I am going to opt for both, using one as a subtitle, maybe after a little word-tinkering.

A tall order

One of the most daunting aspects of PhD research is the requirement to read everything that has been written about your subject. The upside of this is you automatically become the world expert on your chosen subject. The downside, you have a lot of reading to do. The right to create neighbourhood councils in London dates from 2007 and there has been some limited reaction from stakeholders.

London Councils had something to say about it during consultation in 2006. London Councils (formerly known as ALG) represents the interests of London borough councils, who currently exercise the rights that would have to be devolved to any new community councils. Quite rightly they point to the variety of existing ad hoc community management schemes that are already in operation, suggesting that community governance is already happening.

In November 2008 think tank LondonSays published a document of opinion pieces, including the views of Simon Hughes, MP for Southwark North and Bermondsey. He describes the current devolved arrangements in Southwark as a rationale for formal community councils in London rather than one for “do nothing”. His concern would seem to be that under the current system the powers of the communities rely too heavily on the willingness of the local authority to co-operate.

One aspect of my research is going to have to be a study of these ad hoc community management arrangements in all of the 32 London boroughs. I want to know how their powers and functions shape up to those of a statutory community/parish council. So, taking a step back, another important area of research is revealed: I firstly need to have complete understanding of the full range of powers available to parish councils. I known many of these date back to 1894 and others come from later incremental legislation.

What is your research about?

I so often get asked this question. As I'm in the early days of my PhD the answer has to be quite vague and rambling, as I'm just finding out myself. There are some things I am certain about. I know I am only interested in Greater London and I am only looking at community organisation below the borough council level.

The catalyst for my research is part four of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 which extends the possibility of creating parish councils to Greater London and allows for new alternative names of "community" and "neighbourhood" council as well the existing "parish" and "town" alternatives.

Parish councils are essentially a rural solution to local governance. In their modern form they have existed since 1894 and were a way of ensuring rural communities had some control of local affairs, whilst other services were provided by district councils covering a much larger area. During the inter-war period of the 1920s and 30s all of the remaining parish councils in Greater London were abolished and in 1965 the creation of parish councils in London was explicitly prevented by law. Elsewhere in England parish councils were extended to towns who lost control of their own affairs in reforms of 1974.

They have traditionally been excluded from the major urban areas, but have started to resurface in the metropolitan counties and conurbations. According to the NALC, over 150 new parish and town councils have been created since 1997. The borough of Milton Keynes for example is completely divided up into parishes. Elsewhere, the creation of a parish council has been used to help pull an urban community together, such as New Frankley in Birmingham. One potential weakness of the application of parish councils to urban areas is that little has been done to amend the powers available to them. I wonder if the tool-kit of responsibilities is so limited in the urban context that community organisers fail to see the potential return on their investment in setting up a council.

Setting out your stall

Ask a Londoner where they are from and "London" is unlikely to be  the response. Invariably it will be one of a series of ambiguously defined micro localities such as "Abbey Wood", "Mile End" or "Yiewsley" (can't find a London place name starting with 'z') The 32 London boroughs, with their often arbitrary boundaries, are even less likely to be given as home localities.

It is perhaps surprising that the organisation of our local government is primarily focussed on the two levels we identify with the least: the Greater London region and the London boroughs. Very little is organised at a community level, and where it is, it tends to be ad hoc in nature and little-known about. There are examples of highly active groups, but some are focussed on a single issue, lack enough influence to be successful or fail to engage with the community at large, relying on the tireless effort of a single personality.

Elsewhere in England small communities have elected bodies, usually known as parish or town councils, who take over some affairs from the local authority. Greater London hasn't had this sort of local democracy since the 1930s. However, in 2007 a change was made to the law to allow neighbourhood or community councils to be formed. As yet, no community has taken up this opportunity. I am going to find out why, and follow any attempts to set one up.