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Parish Councils (Planning)

I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to raise, at perhaps greater length than I might have had, the issues of parish councils. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) said in the previous debate, it is very rare that we have the opportunity in this place to talk about what are, certainly in England, the basic building blocks of our democratic system, so it is appropriate to take that opportunity. The parish council is an extremely venerable institution. It arguably dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, although in its more recent appearance it dates from Gladstone’s Local Government Act 1894. A criticism sometimes made of the structures in this country compared with other countries is that we are under-parished. We have relatively fewer community councils at that lowest local level than similar countries in Europe or elsewhere. I have to say that from the perspective of my constituency, it does not seem that way. As Members may know, I have a large rural constituency, and every year I do a tour of my villages. There are more than 120 of them, and I normally visit at least 100 of them each summer during my tour. There are more than 100 parish councils; I think that the figure is 101, but it is a little difficult to be precise because we have at least one detached part of a parish council that lies in another constituency, so the calculation becomes more complex. I applied for the debate specifically in response to criticisms expressed to me by a couple of villages: Cranmore and Leigh-on-Mendip. I have noted, since securing the debate and in earlier discussions, that very similar points come up in discussion with a variety of parish councils. They vary widely in their size, of course, and in their function, ranging from the smallest, with relatively little in the way of a local role or budget, to quite sizeable town councils. Frome is the biggest town council in my constituency, but others are actively engaged in running local facilities and take an interest in the development of their town or village. Those that have been engaged in the market towns initiative are able to unlock significant funding to accomplish some of their objectives.