Why lots of English towns are creating puny local governments

The old town hall in Margate, an English seaside town, is a creamy neoclassical edifice topped with a clock tower. For decades it housed Margate’s municipal government. After that was abolished in 1974, along with many other local governments in England, the building fell into disuse. Somebody has written “a big empty building ha ha ha ha ha” on one wall. But the idea it represents, that Margate should run its own affairs, is reviving.

Last year some 45,000 people in the town were asked whether they wanted to set up a council. Although fewer than 800 replied, those who did were keen. As a result, municipal government is likely to return after a half-century hiatus. It is a straw in the wind—one of many flying about England at the moment. Towns like Margate are rushing to create councils, hinting at flaws in one of the Labour government’s most ambitious policies.

Labour has embarked on the biggest reform of local government in England since the 1970s. Many district councils (which handle things like rubbish and local planning) and county councils (social care, education and highways) are being abolished. They will be replaced by large unitary councils that will handle everything. Big cities like London and Manchester are already organised more or less like this.

In Margate the change will be dramatic. The town is currently served by Thanet District Council, covering a population of 140,000 in north-east Kent (its 1970s redbrick offices in Margate are not a patch on the old town hall). The boundaries of the new unitary authority have not been decided, but it will be large. Thanet has proposed one that would include more than 400,000 inhabitants. Kent County Council argues that the whole county, of 1.9m people, should become a unitary authority.

The prospect of being absorbed into such a huge body is going down badly in Margate and elsewhere. The residents of Epsom and Ewell, two adjacent towns just outside London, are represented by 35 district councillors and five county councillors. After the shake-up they will have as few as ten in total. Local needs will be overlooked, says Hannah Dalton, leader of the soon-to-be-abolished borough council.

New parish and town councils are formed every year. But the National Association of Local Councils, which represents them, says an unusual number are in the works now. Some of the places trying to create them, like Guildford and St Albans, are wealthy; others, like Clacton-on-Sea, are poor. Many are in south-east England, where Labour’s reorganisation of local government is most intense.

Formally, the new entities are puny, with no more power than the parish councils of rural England. They tend to manage parks and allotments—small plots of land where residents try their hand at growing food. They may plant flowering annuals on roundabouts, organise Remembrance Day parades and the Christmas lights, and give small grants to local groups. But they are far more potent than they seem.

For one thing, people care about flowers. In the large parts of England that are untroubled by dramatic crimes or asylum hotels, the health of towns and villages is measured in pansies, parades and public toilets. The residents of Margate want a town council partly because they look at nearby places that have them, and think them tidier. “Broadstairs always looks beautiful,” says Katie Pope, a Margate councillor, speaking of a town 5km away.

Town councils do not stay puny for long. “We started with no office and four members of staff,” says Tom Deakin, the leader of Taunton Town Council in Somerset, which was created in 2023. His council now employs 60-70 people. Higher-level councils, swamped by chunky issues such as homelessness and children in care, are often happy to hand responsibilities down.

Higher-level local authorities must normally hold a referendum if they want to raise taxes by more than 5% a year—something they almost never dare to do. Town and parish councils, which are funded largely through “precepts” on tax bills, face no such restrictions. As their numbers and responsibilities swell, the amount of money flowing to them is growing. Precepts raised £856m ($1.2bn) in 2024-25, a rise of 60% in real terms since 2010-11.

And town councils have one great power. They must be consulted on planning matters. They can also create neighbourhood plans, which specify where houses and other buildings may be erected and where not. Such a plan allows them to capture a larger share of the levy that developers must pay when they put up homes.

Weymouth, on the south coast, approved a neighbourhood plan by referendum in December. It decrees that many green spaces in and around the town are off-limits to developers. It also insists that at least half of all homes built on undeveloped land must be “affordable”, meaning below the market rate or rented by a social-housing landlord. An external assessment estimated that a fall in property prices of just 5% would make such developments unviable.

For a national government that yearns to boost homebuilding, this is a problem. It has stopped funding efforts to create neighbourhood plans. But the bigger towns are likely to go ahead anyway. And the government has only itself to blame for the swelling numbers and powers of low-level councils. Its reforms are creating local authorities that are far too large to be truly local. Town councils are its baby.■