Book: Local Councils Explained

The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) has published a book which aims to be a comprehensive guide to the workings of parish councils, also known as town, community or neighbourhood councils and collectively “local councils”.

Local Councils Explained is a much needed publication, in part because of the additional powers available to parish councils since 2010. The book has been written by the NALC head of legal services, Meera Tharmarajah and has a sound basis in the legislative framework councils inhabit, but is also an accessible document, written in a style that is engaging and clear.

The book include all relevant information for the running of a local council 

There is no one single piece of legislation governing parish councils and the powers and functions are drawn from legislation going back over 100 years. A guide such as this is therefore invaluable to anyone with an interest in the workings of local councils, including parish clerks and of course councillors.

In particular, those trying to set up new councils in areas that have no recent or nearby experience to guide them, such as in London, will benefit from the book and several chapters have been written with them in mind.

The book went on sale on 4 October and is available from NALC.

Response to DCLG consultation on setting up town and parish councils

The Department for Communities and Local Government recently closed a consultation on making it easier to set up new town and parish councils. The current legislative framework for this was set down in 2007. I responded to this consultation and recommended a number of amendments to existing policy, including legislative changes.

The consultation presented a number of problems that campaigners for new parish councils might encounter. These include the lengthy timescales to set up a parish council and the administrative burden. Looking at the example of Queen's Park these two problems appear interrelated. The group started discussions to form a council in 2010, followed the relevant procedures, were successful in their efforts,  but will not come into their powers until 2014.

DCLG presented three options for improving the process of setting up town and parish councils. They were keen to stress that these are not mutually exclusive and some elements of each option could be brought forward. I am of the opinion that such an approach is necessary to achieve the aims of the consultation.

Campaigners may find it demanding to create a parish council

I support amending guidance to reduce the timescales of the community governance reviews. However, without statutory compulsion there is a risk that valid proposals could still be delayed in bureaucracy. Therefore a change must be made to legislation in addition to the guidance. I also support the proposal to create an easier route for neighbourhood forums (used for neighbourhood planning) to become parish councils.

The proposal to reduce the scope of the community governance reviews might have some unintended to consequences in Greater London and I highlighted some other factors that might be more specific to London where there is no recent experience of parish councils. The full response is available online.

Making it easier to set up new town and parish councils

The Department for Communities and Local Government is consulting on changes to the way parish and town councils are set up in England.

Community governance reviews are triggered by a petition

Since the 2007 legislation that allowed parish councils to be formed in Greater London, a new mechanism called a community governance review has been used to create town and parish councils. This represented a devolution of power from the secretary of state to the principal local authorities.

Taking Queen's Park as an example, the only successful parish council in London to date, it took four years from having the idea to form a council in 2010 to coming into their powers in 2014. This is partly due to electoral cycles, but also the guidance for governance reviews which allows local authorities in excess of a year to set the terms of reference and complete the review.

The governance review is only triggered once enough signatures have been collected on a petition. The consultation makes a number of suggested changes to the guidance for principal authorities and has the option of changes to legislation. The department would like responses to their consultation by 9 January 2013.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.