In response to your letters (18 January), from my experience there are three kinds of parish or town council: the proactive, the reactive and the inactive. I should know as I spent 30 years as a councillor – 24 on a town council, as well as 18 on a district council and 16 on a county council, but not necessarily all at the same time.
To bring English local government in line with the other three nations of the UK, we should complete the move started in the 1990s and replace the remaining district and county councils with unitary authorities, and offer enhanced powers to parish/town/neighbourhood councils. Then we should devolve more fiscal powers to local government in general as a precursor to setting up regional assemblies in England and creating a federal UK.
