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LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND REPORT No. 5

LONDON HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 1973 13p net LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND REPORT No. 5

LONDON HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 1973 Crown copyright 1973

JSBN.O 11 700705 6 LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND

CHAIRMAN Sir Edmund Compton, GCB, KBE

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN Mr J M Rankin, QC

MEMBERS The Countess of Albemarle, DBE Mr T C Benfield Professor Michael Chisholm Sir Andrew Wheatley, CBE Mr F B Young, CBE

in THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND REPORT No. 5 -

The Commission in their Report No. 3, dated 31 May 1973, made proposals for the constitution and naming of successor parishes.

Further proposals are made in the attached letter, dated 1 November 1973, which has been sent to the Secretary of State by the Chairman on behalf of the Commission.

DAVID R SMITH (Secretary)

1 November 1973

IV The Rt Hon Geoffrey Rippon QC MP Secretary of State for the Environment 1 November 1973

SUCCESSOR PARISHES (RESUMED REVIEW) 1. In your letter to me of 15 August 1973 you asked the Commission to consider and report to you on the representations you had received from a number of applicants for successor parish status who were not included in the recommendations that we made to you in our Report No. 3 on 31 May last.

2. When we met on 9 August 1973 you told me that in general you were satislied with the recommendations that had resulted from our interpretation and application of the guidelines of 22 January 1973 and that you did not wish us to carry out a fresh review under modified guidelines.

3. Your suggestion was that the Commission might continue the review under the 22 January guidelines that resulted in our Report No. 3, by con- sidering, in the light of representations made since that Report, whether any fresh facts or arguments have been adduced in special instances which might move the Commission to exercise the discretion given to us by the existing guidelines for such exceptional treatment as might lead to additional recom- mendations for successor parish status.

4. After examining these representations, we confirm that, for the most part, they repeat arguments which have previously been presented in full to us and add nothing to the information on which, in the light of the guidelines, we decided not to include them in Report No. 3.

5. However, the timetable by which you required us to complete our first recommendations did not allow us to test our interpretation of the guidelines by means of draft proposals. We therefore welcome the opportunity which you have given us to review the judgements which we reached on the original information, in the light of the opinions which were evoked by Report No. 3, both locally and in Parliament.

6. Much of the criticisms in these further representations is against the guidelines. You have decided not to revise these and it is not for us to speculate on the scope for additional recommendations that might have followed from their modification. But we have taken advantage of the suggestion you made to me on 9 August and have looked again at the scope the existing guidelines give us for exercising our discretion in applying the criteria in particular cases. We have also looked at these further representations to see if they adduce any additional evidence which would have a bearing on our recommendations.

1 METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS 7. Eighty-four of the applications which we did not recommend were for towns in metropolitan districts and 52 of these were the subject of further representations. For this class of applicant, we see no reason to modify the principles on which we applied the 'continuously built-up areas' criterion, as stated in paragraphs 15-20 of Report No. 3. When formulating the recom- mendations in that Report there was a substantial number of instances where size disqualified; in other instances, local wishes were in conflict; but for most, the reason for refusal was that the case was not strong enough to leave us in no doubt about the absence of continuous urban development. Following our review of the further representations there are 10 cases where the doubt has been resolved and we can now recommend successor parish status. These are: Name of Local authority area successor parish UD Denby Dale UD Featherstone Hetton UD Hetton Holmfirth UD Holmfirth UD Horwich UD Llkley Kirkburton UD Kirkburton UD Meltham Normanton UD Normanton Saddleworth UD Saddleworth

Apart from those listed above, we confirm that we have no further recommenda- tions to make, repeating our view, expressed in Report No. 3, that ours is the initial operation and that we believe that further consideration is in the first place for the new districts, as provided by Section 48(8) of the Local Government Act 1972.

NON-METROPOLITAN DISTRICTS 8. Here the 'continuously built-up area' disqualification was fairly rare especially outside the new towns. Diversity of local opinion was an adverse factor in some cases but 48, or nearly all of the unsuccessful applicants in this sector, will be found to exceed one or both of the numerical criteria in guidelines 2 (a) and 2 (b).

9. The guidelines permitted us to make exceptions to the numerical criteria and an analysis of Report No. 3 will show that we did so in 21 cases. As regards guideline 2 (a), we understood the limited size of the unit to be a dominant characteristic of a successor parish, and we took the view, which we now confirm, that exceptions to the upper limit, as quantified in these guidelines, should be truly exceptional, both in the number of exceptions admitted and in the amount of the excess over the limit. Of the successor parishes with populations over 20,000 which we recommended in our Report No. 3, none exceeds 22,000 and all are situated in substantial districts and fit into a pattern, of existing parishes that are 'comparable in size and character' so that their case is supported by this criterion in guideline No. 1. We have examined the further representations to see if there are any special circumstances which warrant further exceptions being made and have concluded that there are two such cases.

10. We felt that there might be more scope for revision of our judgement in the application of the criterion in guideline 2 (b). The principle behind the guideline stands, ie that the object of a parish is to provide a local voice where that voice is too small to be effetively heard at district level, and that the need for the parish voice becomes less as the locality becomes more strongly repre- sented on the district council. But we found on our first review that the principle, when quantified as a one-fifth ratio, was unduly restrictive in its effect in small districts, where its strict application would have disqualified towns of as low as 6,000 or 7,000 population, and decided in such cases that exceptions producing a higher ratio might be allowed without infringing the principle.

If. We have now considered whether there is room for latitude in the admission of exceptions to this criterion in larger non-metropolitan districts, where the population of the town is below or around the 20,000 mark and the town has satisfied the other criteria for a successor parish, and we have identified 15 such cases.

12. All the non-metropolitan district cases referred to above are listed below and we now recommend that they should be added to the towns to be given successor parish status. Name of Local authority area successor parish MB Barnstaple MB Bideford Bishop's Stortford UD Bishop's Stortford MB Chichester MB Clitheroe Falmouth MB Falmouth UD Felixstowe UD Harpenden MB Kendal UD Kidsgrove UD Newton Abbot UD Skipton Tiverton MB Tiverton UD Trowbridge MB Truro UD Winsford MB Wisbech CONCLUSIONS 13. We wish lo stress that in making these proposals we have reached the limit to what we feel can properly be regarded as trie exceptional treatment of the criteria in the existing guidelines, and that a modification of the guidelines would be required before any further extensions could be considered by us. But we end this Report by expressing the hope that the guidelines will be allowed to stand, as providing a sound basis for an initial pattern of successor parishes. We repeat our belief that the way forward should not be sought by further review of the parish structure at this initial stage, but by the subsequent review procedure envisaged by Parliament in Section 48 (8) of the Act.

EDMUND COMPTON

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