Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Mat Bloxham

As reported to the last Standards and General Purposes Committee meeting on 24 August 2023, the Council had received enquiries from parish councils and the public seeking to make changes to parish electoral arrangements. The Committee agreed that the CGR Working Group, that was established for the Wycombe CGR, should also recommend the draft Terms of Reference and Consultation Plan (as appropriate) for any other parish CGR requests received.

The Standards and General Purposes Committee on 18 January 2024 agreed an approach to considering CGR requests received from the community. To date, five formal requests had been received as follows:-

1) Buckingham Town Council – merging wards

2) electors from Lake End Road (affecting Burnham & Dorney Parishes) – change boundaries

3) Hazlemere Parish Council – increase number of councillors from 12 to 16

4) Longwick cum Ilmer Parish Council – increase number of councillors from 7 to 9

5) Newton Longville Parish Council – increase number of councillors from 8 to 10

The Group were reminded that the outcome of a Community Governance Review must, in law:

(a) reflect the identities and interests of the community in that area, and

(b) be effective and convenient

(c) take into account other arrangements for community representation and engagement

The Statutory Guidance said: “Each area should be considered on its own merits, having regard to its population, geography and the pattern of communities, and therefore the Council was prepared to pay particular attention to existing levels of representation, the broad pattern of existing council sizes.”. The Council should also have regard to the important democratic principle that each person’s vote should be of equal weight so far as possible.

The Standards and General Purposes Committee on 18 January 2024 agreed the following approach to considering CGR requests from the community:

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 suggests 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.

The guidance on council size was that a parish or town council must have no fewer than five councillors. There were otherwise no rules to the number of councillors that a parish or town council must or can have although there had been some research undertaken by Aston Business School and the National Association of Local Councils which recommended the number of councillors for varying population sizes.  A five-year population forecast to 2028 had been provided for each of the proposals requesting changes to the overall parish council size (number of councillors).

During discussion the following points were made:-

• A Member asked if a review could be undertaken changing a parished area into an unparished area, particularly if there was a problem within the parish council itself. The Principal Governance Officer reported that there was a provision for a petition to change parish council arrangements which could be considered by the Council if it met the criteria as set out in the report. There was however, no provision to review arrangements simply because a parish council was not working. As democratic bodies, the membership could change over time e.g. with new councillors standing for election. It would be a significant step to dissolve a parish council. In response to another question it was noted that there were statutory thresholds for requesting a review by petition relating to the number of electors.
• Parish and town councils covered a large part of England, but only around 36% of the population. This was because, whilst most rural areas in England were entirely ‘parished’ – they had parish and town councils – many urban areas did not and were therefore said to be ‘unparished’.
• A question was asked about how a Parish CGR review would compare to the Wycombe CGR review. The Electoral Services Manager, stated that there would be engagement with the local community, similar to the polling district review carried out last year, which would include asking Parish Councils to raise awareness of it as well. All correspondence in relation to the reviews would then be brought back to this Committee for consideration as part of the next stage after the consultations have been completed. The draft stakeholder document which was attached to the report outlined the communication plan. The approach and scale of stakeholder engagement with the Wycombe CGR was larger as it asked whether a Town Council should be created which was different to an amendment to local governance. Therefore, there had been more advertising for the Wycombe CGR which included sending out household letters to seek feedback from the local community.

Members considered that the Town and Parish Councils had put good reasoned arguments for a review and thanked the officers for their work on this and their work on it for the forthcoming year as it would be a busy year for the elections team. On a vote being taken (proposed by Cllr Chapple and seconded by Cllr Brazier) it was unanimously

RESOLVED

a)      That the following proposals to review parish electoral arrangements proceed to a review:-

1. Buckingham Town Council

2. electors from Lake End Road (affecting Burnham & Dorney Parishes)

3. Hazlemere Parish Council

4. Longwick cum Ilmer Parish Council

5. Newton Longville Parish Council

b) That the draft Terms of Reference, stakeholder engagement and timetable (appendix 3, 4 & 5 of the report), be agreed.