NALC welcomes county plan to hand services to clusters of parishes

The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) has welcomed a county council’s plans to give parish councils greater powers through a new ‘clusters’ initiative.

Under the proposals, Buckinghamshire would look to hand responsibility for managing services to groups of between five and 20 parishes.

The county has set aside a budget of £900,000 in scope for 2015-16 for the services, and £700,000 in the following three years. These figures will be recalculated if not all parishes take part.

The local authority said the total budget would not change but it was open to discussing how it is used. Each town and parish council will receive a budget from the money this year.

On its ‘Parish Devolution Portal’, Buckinghamshire said it had been working with 23 town and parish councils for several years to support them to take over a range of services.

“Devolution builds local ownership and enables parishes to take control over how services are delivered, and we're now seeking to roll out this programme out across the county,” it argued.

Buckinghamshire said that where clusters wished to commence services from April 2015, it would like an informal commitment to proceed in September this year.

The portal said that services would only be devolved if they were of minimum risk to parishes if delivered by the parishes themselves.

The essential services which will be included in every arrangement are:

• Urban grass cuts (with the number of cuts to be set by the cluster).
• Weed spraying of noxious and injurious (but not invasive) types.
• Siding of overgrown footways to reinstate full width.
• Responsibility for ensuring hedge cutting is carried out by landowners.
• Public rights of way clearance to the parish boundary.
• Maintenance work, such as: cleaning of traffic signs; minor traffic sign repairs; trimming vegetation obstructing pavements and footpaths (or liaising with landowners where appropriate); checking obstructions to pavements and footpaths; serving of hedge cutting notices and verge maintenance including clearing, soiling and seeding.

Buckinghamshire said councils were free to work out which parishes they wanted to cluster with.

Cllr Ken Browse, chair of National Association of Local Councils (NALC), said: “Parish and town councils know their places better than anyone and it's good to see Buckinghamshire county council looking to work closer with them.

“Clustering and service delegation were two models of how councils can work together to deliver local services which we highlighted in our Modelling Devolution report.”