Agenda item

Contact Officer: Nick Graham/ Mat Bloxham

The Standards and General Purposes Committee meeting had been informed in August 2023 that the Council had received enquiries from Parish Councils and the public seeking to make changes to parish electoral arrangements. To date, five requests had been received.

Whilst the process for conducting a Community Governance Review was set out in legislation and statutory guidance, the Committee received a report which proposed an approach for the handling of community-based requests not made via a petition.  This was to ensure there was consistency and greater clarity on the approach to be followed. In summary, it was proposed that in addition to meeting the legislative requirements and statutory guidance, any proposal had to demonstrate local support and where this involved changing Council size that the request was justified e.g. by taking account of the number and duration of any unfilled casual vacancies in preceding years.

Section 2 of the report explained when a principal council must undertake a review, e.g. when presented with a valid community governance petition, and when a principal council may undertake a CGR of any part of the area at any time, e.g. in response to receiving a reasonable request for a review from residents or a parish council.  When deciding whether to carry out a review in response to such a request the council had to first determine whether the request was reasonable. A request could refer to changes to population or anomalous boundaries. A request was considered unreasonable if it disrupted community cohesion or did not result in effective and convenient local government arrangements.

The Committee report suggested that before formal consideration was given to a request if be required to have the following:

(a)               Proposals purporting to come from a parish council or councils should be based on a formal resolution of at least one of those councils;

(b)               Proposals purporting to come from individuals or community groups should demonstrate wider support and that any existing parish councils affected by the proposal have already been consulted;

(c)               Where a proposal suggested an increase in Councillor numbers, a commentary was supplied on how this was justified with regard to the Council’s success or otherwise in filling casual vacancies.

It was suggested that if these principles were accepted that the Council’s web pages on community governance reviews, and the advice given to interested parties, were updated accordingly to manage expectations.

Members were informed that following approval of the approach to reviewing CGR proposals, the cross-party Councillor Working Group would apply the principles to the requests currently in hand. The Standards and General Purposes Committee would then receive a report at the next meeting on 4 April 2024 detailing the Group’s recommendations on any such CGR proposals received to date, along with a proposed timetable for conducting any reviews that were taken forward.

A Member made reference to the table at 2.1 and asked why the middle band was not shown as a percentage and what that percentage should be. This was lifted from the guidance but would be checked.

Another question was asked about whether a request could be made for CGRs so that they are dealt with, for example biannually (every two years), at the same time and in the most efficient way. The Electoral Services Manager reported that five had been received so far but with 167 parishes in Buckinghamshire if a number of them requested reviews at the same time the Council could be inundated. A CGR could be triggered any time if a petition had the required number of signatures. The Deputy Chief Executive reported that a process for considering CGR requests was required as there were limited resources to progress these, especially in the event a large number of CGR requests were received. It was suggested a report be submitted to the next meeting with a proposed CGR review timetable which could include batching the reviews.

On a vote being taken (proposed by Cllr Chapple and seconded by Cllr Carington) it was:-

RESOLVED –

That the approach to reviewing proposals to change parish areas or electoral arrangements via a Community Governance Review received by the Council be AGREED, as set out in paragraphs 2.4 to 2.6 of the Committee report.