Tag Archives: parish councils

Pickles calls for more parishes

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As if to prove my point regarding Eric Pickles hatred of local government, he’s continuing his campaign to rid the country of local government, be it district, borough, county, or even unitary. I’ve long believed that the campaign to encourage quality parish councils, was part of central government’s ambitions to rid itself of the unruly brat called local government.

Let’s not forget that, unlike district councils and above, parish and town councils have to get all of their cash from local taxpayers via a precept. Also, very few, if any, of those elected to this the lowest level of local democracy, receive allowances. This combination of very limited funding, untrained and un-remunerated members and little in the way of professional staff, means that most of these councils spend their time fretting about very, very local issues, such as the length of the grass on verges or why the streets aren’t being swept more often.

Pickles and co are seeking to distract local people into thinking that they are having a real say in what’s going on locally, because they now have their own parish, or town council. This whilst also starving higher level councils of cash as a way of turning them in to no more than front men for central government policies. Westminster will then be able do what they like, without the inconvenience of being challenged by those in local government.

Given the continued uncertainty that we all suffer when it comes to our income and the cost of living, what chance is there that the people of Spalding would be willing to possibly double the amount of council tax they pay as the Spalding Special Expenses, in order to set up a Spalding Town Council?

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online 31 October, 2012 | By Kaye Wiggins

The Department for Communities & Local Government has set out a range of proposals that aim to make it quicker and easier for local residents to set up parish councils.

Following a call from communities secretary Eric Pickles to “remove red tape” around the creation of parish councils to “give local people a real sense of community control in their areas”, the department has set out a series of ideas that will be open for consultation until January.

In its consultation document, the department said: “We want to tilt the balance in favour of community groups, where there is the demonstrable support of a majority of local people. Where local people express popular support for the creation of a town or parish council, the local authority should work with the community to achieve that.”

The plans set out three possible routes to achieve Mr Pickles’ vision and are summarised below:

Option 1: Changing guidance

Guidance “could strongly encourage authorities to complete the process in less time”

It “could make it clear that the right weight should be given to what is effective and convenient for the local community, separately from for the local authority itself.”

It “could propose that as a matter of good practice, the local authority could carry out a review of a decision not to create a town or parish council if campaigners want one.”

Option 2: Legal change

The number of signatures required to force a council to consider an application for a parish council to be set up could be halved.

The DCLG document notes: “The disadvantage of this option is that lowering the threshold for a petition triggering a community governance review runs the risk that petitions which do not have sufficient community backing will be considered, potentially wasting resources or leading to the creation of a council which is not wanted by the local community.”

The timescale for a “community governance review” – the process by which a parish council would be considered – could be shortened to six months. Alternatively there could be a single limit of nine or 12 months for the whole process, from the receipt of a petition

Councils could be required to publish timescales linked to the electoral cycle, so that if a parish council is approved there would not be a delay caused by the wait for the next election.

Option 3: Neighbourhood forums

A neighbourhood forum could submit an application to trigger a community governance review, rather than having to submit a petition with the required number of signatures.

A timely warning to all of us

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Here’s an interesting piece (for those of us interested in planning issues that is) from a planning website where local government planners pose questions to colleagues. It should serve as a timely warning to any council concerned about how to deal with neighbourhood plans. For those who don’t wish to read the whole thing, it’s all about neighbourhood plans being used by some parties as a way of promoting their own vested interests.

Having found no interest in these at all, suddenly here in (location deleted for obvious reasons) we’ve got 3 suggestions coming forward and need to act fast if we are to bid for CLG grant – assuming they could be runners.
What worries us is that they all propose housing developments that run counter to our recently adopted LDF (Core Strategy, Development Policies and Allocations DPDs) and therefore could fail at the first hurdle of not being in general conformity with the strategic policies of the local plan.
Being a large rural area we have a sustainable settlement hierarchy in our core strategy to promote development in the towns and larger villages with a good range of services, etc and we severely restrict new housing development elsewhere, including small villages. We now have a small village of 20 houses with a supportive parish council (covering a wider area) wanting to promote 2 dwellings for the families of well respected local business people, whose planning applications have previously been refused.
So only 2 dwellings – hardly a general conformity issue you might think? but it could be repeated and it undemines our strategy of delivering sustainable development, yet is probably in line with national policy.
What do you think? Anybody else proceeding with a neighbourhood plan for 2 dwellings? The other 2 proposed neighbourhood plans relate to secondary service villages with no housing allocations and tightly defined development limits and developers wanting to promote relatively large sites.
One sites was even rejected for allocation by the LDF Inspector last year. It’s not certain they would get 50% community support, but with a referendum not until the end of the process it’s an unknown and potentially a waste of money.
In one village several members of the parish council have direct interests in the site promoted, so presumably couldn’t vote. Is anybody else struggling over how to proceed with neighbourhood plans that don’t comply with the LDF and have PC members with vested interests?

Planning after Localism event

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I attended a Westminster Briefing event in London  today, in an attempt to get a better handle on how to make the new system work at the district council level.

There was a very clear feeling amongst those attending, that the new system of neighbourhood planning, if it was to become a success, would need a significant amount of resource putting in.  There was also a feeling that the minister was being extremely optimistic in his belief that neighbourhood planning would bring about any real increase in the number of houses delivered.

Most people also questioned how the New Homes Bonus (NHB), having been created by taking money away from councils in the first place, could be seen as an incentive to councils and communities to build more houses based on increased benefits to the community, as it was likely that most councils would simply use it to plug the funding gap that was now being imposed by government – the lord giveth and the lord taketh away as they say, except in the case of NHB, it’s the other way around – the gov takes it and then gives it back, if you do their bidding!

I asked Bob Neill the minister, who spoke at today’s event, how councils would be able to identify how much extra cash they had been given in the grant settlement, to help communities produce their plans, when councils didn’t know how many communities might want to produce a plan in the first place?  I think he said they were working on it and that I should ask the question as part of the consultation currently going on!

All a bit disappointing really, as I think neighbourhood and community plans could be a very good thing for people to get involved in producing.  Not only would it give them a much greater stake in the way their local area is to be developed, it would also help to get people involved in the planning process in a much more positive and long-term way than they do currently.

Unfortunately, unless the local planning authority has the right level of expertise and resource, it is likely that they are either going to avoid encouraging communities to produce plans, or worse still, actually frustrate the ambitions of those that want to produce a plan, by offering only the very minimum of assistance.

This is a great opportunity for us to show some real leadership and encouragement to our communities, but only if we have the right level of resources to do it well.