I recently introduced my young son to the latest Star Trek reboot to balance his growing knowledge and love of Star Wars. He’s fascinated by space and pioneering exploration, of which the latter seems have made its way to earth and into the current legislative programme. The new government and new communities secretary Greg Clark […]
New parishes are coming! And boy are they, with the Cumbrian towns of Penrith and Whitehaven just in the last two weeks given the green light to have their own town councils from April next year. As our most local level of democracy continues its revival – it’s the only growing part of local government […]
Back in May there was barely a mention in the media of the historic elections to London’s first ever parish council in Queen’s Park, Westminster. To be expected really given their obsession with what would happen to UKIP and the Liberal Democrats in the European elections and how many London’s borough councils would turn red. But the same might happen again next year, […]
This week is Create a Council week, organised by the National Association of Local Councils to coincide with the historic elections to the new Queen’s Park Community Council, London’s first parish council. Being held for the very first time, the week is about promoting the creation of new parish councils in England’s towns and cities, […]
Full text of speech by the Chairman of NALC, Councillor Ken Browse, to the ‘What next for localism?’ conference on Wednesday 26 March 2014: Good afternoon everyone. I want to start by saying thank you to Freddie for chairing today’s event. As the Chairman of NALC it’s usually my job to ensure our event runs […]
“Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” – Helen Keller Best wishes for the New Year.
Keynote speech by the Chairman of NALC, Councillor Ken Browse, to the County Councils Network annual conference on Monday 18 November 2013.
Alert students in the parish classroom will this week and next be reading the new Winter edition of the local government journal LCR. Which you’ll have guessed from the title of this post contains a must read article on fracking! Here’s my 20 reasons from the Winter edition why LCR is essential reading, especially for […]
A speech by Rory Stewart MP – who is also Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on local democracy – on the future of local democracy on Wednesday 27 November, at an event hosted by Localis.
In this first in a new series of guest posts, academic James Derounian argues that parish councillors and clerks need training in order to make the most of localism: When parish and town (local) councils were invented way back in 1894, who could have predicted that in 2012 (118 years later!) they would still exist, […]
Justin's #hyperlocal democracy blog 