What is a Town or Parish Council?
Parish and Town Councils are the democratic bodies with the
closest direct links to their communities and as such can
contribute significantly to the priorities contained in the
community strategies which principal local authorities are
responsible for preparing. Each of our Parish Councils has two
Principle Authorities to deal with. First and closest to home is
Tendring District Council with whom most of their business is
conducted, then Essex County Council for matters such as Highways,
Street Lighting, Social Services and Schools.
Tendring has a close liaison with Parishes through the Tendring
District Association of Local Councils (TDALC) and the Parishes
themselves work with the Essex Association of Local Councils (EALC)
who have representatives from the County on their Executive
Committee.
Parish and Town Councils are the first tier of local government.
They have a large range of responsibles including planning,
community halls, street lighting, play areas, village greens,
promotion of respective communites. Although this is not an
exhaustive list they work closely with the local district Council
who are the second tier in local government. The third tier in the
structure is the County Council.
Quality Parish Councils
The Rural White Paper, 'Our Countryside: The Future. A Fair Deal
for Rural England', published in November 2000 created an
opportunity for a Parish Council to become a 'Quality Parish
Council'. Achieving Quality Parish Status demonstrates that a
council has met certain minimum standards expected from an
effective, representative and active Parish Council. To achieve
this a Council had to meet a number of requirements such as the
electoral mandate, meaning members should have been elected not
appointed, their Clerk had to be properly qualified, they had to
hold regular meetings, distribute to residents reports of their
activities, produce an Annual Report and work with local voluntary
organisations. In the first round of certification in 2003, a
Parish Council in Tendring was one of the first seven Councils so
designated in England.
Within Tendring we have three Parish Councils with Quality
status. These are: -
Alresford
St Osyth
Thorrington
To learn more about "Quality" Parishes please visit the
National Association of Local
Councils (NALC) website.
How Parish and Town Councils Began
Parish Councils were formed in 1894 when the Gladstone's
Government passed the Local Government Act of that year. This Act
created the Local Government entities known as a Parish Councils
which continued to use the word Parish, a word familiar to rural
residents who knew of Parochial Church Council's who had dealt with
all local affairs, until this Act removed civil matters previously
dealt with by the Church Councils, transferring them to the new
Parish Councils, even conforming in most cases to the
ecclesiastical parish boundaries.
It would be true to say that Parish Council's varied enormously
and in reality were not highly regarded by successive governments.
Shortly after the Second World War a report was prepared, by Lord
Redcliffe-Maud, to strengthen parishes, but a change of government
shelved the draft proposals and his reforms of Parish Councils,
intended to turn them into real local government bodies had to wait
until to Local Government Act 1972. In Tendring we have 27 Parish
and Town Councils. There are over 10,000 Parishes in England.
A Parish Council conducts its business in accordance with its
powers. It has 34 distinct powers, each under an Act of Parliament,
from the ability to own and manage allotments and cemeteries to
village greens. Governments add additional powers from time to time
and for example from 31st December 2008, new legislation will
create a 'Power of Wellbeing', that will enable a Parish to
undertake any work in its area to promote the economic, social and
environmental well-being of the Parish, without reference to any
other statutory power. To use this power a Parish will need to
undertake training and be judged capable of using the power, which
when obtained will open the horizon of activity almost without
limit, always provided what it does is judged by its members to be
for the economic, social and environmental well-being of the
Parish
It seems likely that future governments will continue to
encourage Parish Councils to play a more important role in their
respective communities, stressing their closeness to the electorate
and the relative speed with which a local Parish Council can
respond to a local issue. The days of Parish Council membership
being akin to joining a good club have gone forever. A Parish
Councillor today has a responsible role to discharge for the
benefit of his or her local community!
Rural Services Community
The Rural Services Community is the community voice for rural
services, designed to provide smaller organisations with
information and best practice relating to rural affairs. Their
forums give members the opportunity to discuss issues relating to
rural services and to share information.
For further information please visit the
Rural
Services Community website.
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