Tuesday, February 09, 2021
Talking about Handforth Parish Council
I have just come across the Guardian editorial about the meeting of Handforth parish council which went viral last week because of the appalling behaviour of some of its members in a zoom meeting. They make some interesting and valuable points about politics at this level.
It is worth though, taking in the stats. As the Guardian says parish councils in England collected £596m in local taxes in 2020-21. For around 20 million people, and 100,000 councillors, they are a part of our democratic fabric and civil society (arrangements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales vary). As well as small villages with just a few hundred residents, parish councils (the name is confusing) include town, community and city councils, for example in Salisbury. Yet their workings remain obscure to many people.
Here in Wales, there are 738 Community and Town Councils representing 1,674,811 electors, that is 72% of the total number of people entitled to vote across the country. In 2017-18 they raised £38,199,045 in council tax off a tax base of £887,811. That is an average band D equivalent Council Tax of £43 per property. A report by the Auditor General Wales stated that, in 2015-16, Community Councils were managing reserves worth over £32 million and long-term assets worth over £188 million.
This is no small potatoes, and as the Guardian says, they can form an important lifeline for many communities:
Civil parishes should receive more attention, especially from anyone who has an interest in the politics of place or – less abstractly – in the public realm in the area where they live (parks, cycle lanes, community events). In villages and towns across England, this is where the more dynamic parish councils have an impact: managing recreation grounds and village halls, upgrading play areas. In recent years, they have also stepped in to fill gaps created by cuts, funding youth services and developing projects connected with housing and public health.
With the power to charge a precept from residents that is, unlike other local taxes, uncapped, combined with a strongly voluntaristic ethos (since councillors are unpaid, and staffing levels tend to the minimalist), parishes are an interesting intersection between the third sector and the state. Unsurprisingly, given their strength in rural areas (although only half of parish councils are run along party political lines), they have more often attracted the interest of Tory politicians. Boosting parishes was an idea associated with the “big society” (85 new ones have been created since 2013), and it has recently returned in proposals by the backbencher Danny Kruger, and the Onward thinktank.
Just as it was under David Cameron, the notion that nice neighbours can make up for the deliberate cruelty of underfunded public services is a dangerous myth. Such wishful thinking deserves to be squashed. But the democratic institutions of civil society should be respected for their potential, and not dismissed. Raymond Williams wrote of the long struggle to craft an inclusive English culture, and drew a contrast between the “bourgeois model” of public service and “working-class ethic of solidarity”. Handforth may not have offered the best advertisement. But as the struggle Williams described goes on, parish councils should be counted among the settings where what he called the “hard, detailed inquiry and negotiation” of our shared problems can be done.
I wrote about community councils in Wales here. In my view they need to be reorganised and reformwd. A strengthened tier of local government at this level would be more accountable, more robust and deliver important place-based services, enabling the bigger county councils to act in a more strategic way and to focus on more specialist services such as education, social services and community health care.
It is worth though, taking in the stats. As the Guardian says parish councils in England collected £596m in local taxes in 2020-21. For around 20 million people, and 100,000 councillors, they are a part of our democratic fabric and civil society (arrangements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales vary). As well as small villages with just a few hundred residents, parish councils (the name is confusing) include town, community and city councils, for example in Salisbury. Yet their workings remain obscure to many people.
Here in Wales, there are 738 Community and Town Councils representing 1,674,811 electors, that is 72% of the total number of people entitled to vote across the country. In 2017-18 they raised £38,199,045 in council tax off a tax base of £887,811. That is an average band D equivalent Council Tax of £43 per property. A report by the Auditor General Wales stated that, in 2015-16, Community Councils were managing reserves worth over £32 million and long-term assets worth over £188 million.
This is no small potatoes, and as the Guardian says, they can form an important lifeline for many communities:
Civil parishes should receive more attention, especially from anyone who has an interest in the politics of place or – less abstractly – in the public realm in the area where they live (parks, cycle lanes, community events). In villages and towns across England, this is where the more dynamic parish councils have an impact: managing recreation grounds and village halls, upgrading play areas. In recent years, they have also stepped in to fill gaps created by cuts, funding youth services and developing projects connected with housing and public health.
With the power to charge a precept from residents that is, unlike other local taxes, uncapped, combined with a strongly voluntaristic ethos (since councillors are unpaid, and staffing levels tend to the minimalist), parishes are an interesting intersection between the third sector and the state. Unsurprisingly, given their strength in rural areas (although only half of parish councils are run along party political lines), they have more often attracted the interest of Tory politicians. Boosting parishes was an idea associated with the “big society” (85 new ones have been created since 2013), and it has recently returned in proposals by the backbencher Danny Kruger, and the Onward thinktank.
Just as it was under David Cameron, the notion that nice neighbours can make up for the deliberate cruelty of underfunded public services is a dangerous myth. Such wishful thinking deserves to be squashed. But the democratic institutions of civil society should be respected for their potential, and not dismissed. Raymond Williams wrote of the long struggle to craft an inclusive English culture, and drew a contrast between the “bourgeois model” of public service and “working-class ethic of solidarity”. Handforth may not have offered the best advertisement. But as the struggle Williams described goes on, parish councils should be counted among the settings where what he called the “hard, detailed inquiry and negotiation” of our shared problems can be done.
I wrote about community councils in Wales here. In my view they need to be reorganised and reformwd. A strengthened tier of local government at this level would be more accountable, more robust and deliver important place-based services, enabling the bigger county councils to act in a more strategic way and to focus on more specialist services such as education, social services and community health care.
