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A Parish Council also known as a Local Council, is a statutory local authority in its own right, as the third tier of local government. It has a wide variety of powers conferred by many statutes (Acts of Law), which it administers within it's parish boundary (local authority area). A common misconception is that today's Parish Council is in some way
connected with, or part of, the Church. The confusion arises over the word
'parish', which originates from over 500 years ago when These responsibilities were administered through meetings of the inhabitants of the Parish and were known as Vestries. As populations expanded, so did the size of the meetings, so they split into smaller and more administratively efficient committees called Select Vestries which in turn claimed a separate existence. Unfortunatley the Select Vestries, using the Church Rate (the power of levy) rapidly became notorious for being corrupt and considerable damage was done to the old parochial system of authorities. In the 1800's the Church Rate was abolished and the poor law administration was withdrawn from the parochial authorities. As society developed new administrative services were created to fulfil the needs of the Parish. The organisation of these services proved to be inefficient and complicated. It took Parliament twenty years of legislation and experimentation to resolve the issue. In 1894 the Local Government Act was passed which created local authorities responsible for the administration of a Parish's services as well as the civil functions of the old parochial institutions - the new authorities were known as Parish Councils |
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