Comment: Parish Councils – Who Cares?

Published on: 26 Jul, 2025
Updated on: 29 Jul, 2025

By Martin Giles

A letter from the former chair of Guildford Labour on parish councils has triggered a significant reader reaction.

Excellent! Part of the role of The Dragon is to provide a platform for proper public discussion and the ongoing debate is a sign that there is still some interest and strong feeling about our local democracy.

Brian Creese asked: “What does Worplesdon Parish Council do? A good question.” (I think it is normally for others to decide on the merits of a question, but no matter.)

He then answered himself, writing: “It has some staff and an office and seems to spend most of its time cutting verges and hedges. However there were verges and hedges in Stoke ward, cut by the borough council. But in Worplesdon we pay a mysterious extra rate, or precept, for no obvious services.”

The Labour activist then gave a glimpse of the motivation behind his comment: “There is much talk of a ‘democratic deficit’, and yet there are rarely elections for parish councils in Guildford Borough as there are invariably more vacancies than candidates. Party labels are not used – apart from Ash I believe – and I couldn’t tell you the names of our parish councillors or what they believe in.”

Adding: “I do know that even compared to GBC, parish councillors tend to be elderly, white and male. So for me, living in a parish provides no extra services but does have an extra cost, there are never actual elections and we never hear from our parish councillors.”

Dragon readers have queued up to take issue with the Labour activist, explaining the various functions of parish councils, the preparedness of parish councillors to serve their communities with no monetary recompense and the value many residents consider parish councils give.

But it is also true that not enough people are willing to serve on parish councils, elections are rarely contested and, very sadly and worryingly, most of us have very little understanding of local democracy or its structure, nor of the pros and cons of the new proposed structure we are being rushed into.

The result of one of wards in the Worplesdon Parish Council election May 2023. As can be seen, there were no more candidates than seats available so no one needed to vote.

The real value of local democracy is that decisions are taken by local people, those with detailed knowledge of the community and the impact changes might have, good and bad. Also, crucially, those taking the decisions, being local, have more than others at stake. To use the modern idiom, they have “skin in the game”. And the more local the level of those decisions the more those factors apply.

But there is an additional advantage of parish councils. They are normally free of party politics, which can have such a malign effect at borough and county council levels. Party loyalty, peer pressure from party colleagues and patronage can all influence the way councillors vote. They might deny it but having watched local politics for over a decade I know it’s true.

The local government reorganisation proposals has been labelled “devolution” by the Government but it would only be that if decision-making power is moved downwards. That is not what is happening. Already borough and district councils have little real discretion of planning applications.

They take their decisions with one eye over their shoulder at the appeal process and a planning “inspector” who is probably a stranger to the area arriving like a Government enforcer foisting pro-development decisions unsupported by the local council elected by the local population. As an example, just look at the Solum Development at the station unanimously rejected by the GBC Planning Committee.

CGI view of proposed apartment blocks at Guildford station viewed from train platform. Solum Regeneration/ Guildford Borough Council

There might well be merits in a local government reorganisation and in the creation of unitary authorities but be in no doubt the intention is to centralise power even more than it has been. Of course, they will get away with it because, simply, not enough of us care.

Responses to Comment: Parish Councils – Who Cares?

Jan Messinger Reply

July 26, 2025 at 4:17 pm

Thank you Martin Giles for adding to the debate and you are quite right “simply, not enough people care”. However, hopefully some people will have taken notice of those who do by using their local knowledge, being involved and trying to act for the good of their parish. It might actually make people stand for co option to their parish council if there are vacancies. Better still, they could go along to a parish council meeting and see for themselves what it’s all about and get involved. After all, they can ask a question of agenda items at the start of a meeting and become active in the community they live in.

I am hoping that what started as a very negative letter by Brian Creese now raises awareness to such an important part of local government.
Tarza-Galina Volkhovskaya Reply

July 26, 2025 at 10:27 pm

“The real value of local democracy is that decisions are taken by local people, those with detailed knowledge of the community and the impact changes might have, good and bad.” Very true, but in the case of Worplesdon Parish Council they appear to not take on board the views of local people (I write of the recent proposed development at Hester’s Yard on Oak Hill – yet again an attempt to change the area beyond recognition that was rejected by GBC last time, and again following an unsuccessful appeal, but fully supported by WPC).

Of over 100 comments made on the previous proposal, just two were supportive. All the others opposed. WPC has not listened to the local residents and businesses, some of which will be lost completely, thus depriving an area that already lacks a lot of even more.

It seems possible that decisions could be influenced by the prospect of a shiny new little office for WPC on the site, and therefore the views of local residents and businesses shrugged off, along with the fact that the area does not have the infrastructure to support things as it is, let alone adding yet more houses.

Very little effort has been made by both the developer and WPC to make people aware of the new proposal, unlike the last time when there were open consultations and a proper time-frame for comments, yet now it has been almost rushed through with very little, if any, consultation.

I do believe parish councils play an important part in our communities, but there should be open, consistent and truly impartial approaches made to all things on the agenda, regardless of whether the council stands to gain or be rewarded, lest they lose the ‘s’ in Parish and replace it with another ‘a’.
David Roberts Reply

July 27, 2025 at 11:16 am

We should resist the temptation to see this as a moral issue: that people should “care” more. The problem is structural: people don’t care about parish councils because they have very few resources and power. That is correctable by government.

What worries me most about Mr Creese’s attitude, therefore, is that he represents the local Labour party, and that that party has been elected to government with an overwhelming national majority. Yet he has shown himself to be utterly out of touch.

It is beyond Orwellian that he can endorse local government centralisation in Surrey as “devolution”. But this may explain why Labour in Guildford are such a vanishingly irrelevant force, with only three out of 48 borough councillors.
Olly Azad Reply

July 27, 2025 at 4:11 pm

The Sun newspaper on the morning of the 1992 general election ran an unforgettable front-page headline on the Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock: “If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”

Paradoxically, if the former chair of Labour Party Brian Creese is invited to another parish council meeting in the future, “Can someone please keep the blinds so that he begins to “See the light”.
Rex Thorpe Reply

August 19, 2025 at 11:47 am

It seems that someone in Guildford (no parish councils here yet) cares. As GBC is about to be abolished, a consultation on having one (or three) “parish” councils for Guildford has been launched.

What do people think the pros and cons are?

Would it give Guildford and voice that it is otherwise destined by the current government see drowned out in a huge unitary council?

Would it just be an extra cost; a way of subsidising the rest of the unitary area by taking on tasks that would otherwise fall to unitary authority?
Dave Middleton Reply

August 19, 2025 at 11:01 pm

I thought the whole idea of this unitary authority thing was to do away with a layer of bureacracy and simplify local govenment to increase efficiency, accountability and reduce cost.

To me it seems that we’re going to end up just swapping GBC for a town council and probably paying more for the privilege in some kind of town council precept.

Given that GBC gets a chunk of our council tax as it is, why should we end up paying an additional fee for an organisation that will responsible for doing less? Surely any funding for the new town council should come out of the existing chunk we pay.