Keep our Parish Council thriving – consultation closes 9th May 2025
April 21, 2025 | by Paul Ward

Community Governance Review for Knebworth
These are my own personal opinions and not necessarily the view of the parish council itself or other parish councillors. I’ve been a parish councillor here for a decade now and I’m also a district councillor the last year. I would strongly encourage everyone to form their own views and please feed back to the district council using their consultation form available here by 9th May 2025.
The community governance review, run by North Herts District Council, is proposing a couple of key changes to Knebworth Parish Council:
- Reduce the number of parish Councillors from 12 to 9,
- Change the electoral cycle, such that the elections in 2026 result in a 2-year term of office ending in 2028; thereafter revert to 4-yearly terms in line with North Herts District elections.
The details of the proposals are here on this District Council report from February 2025 on page 29. If you need help with the survey call 01462 474000 or email CommunityGovReview@north-herts.gov.uk
I welcome aligning the electoral cycles, it saves money and helps improve turnout. I understand the intent behind reducing the number of Parish Councillors but I am concerned that it will lead to less diversity of people representing our community as well as ultimately nobody wanting to be a parish councillor any more due to an increasing unpaid workload spread across fewer people.
This may well lead to no voice and poorer outcomes for our community, especially if unitary authority changes for Hertfordshire mean that more power is concentrated centrally alongside this.

Fewer councillors may not mean better councillors or outcomes
I’m deeply concerned that reducing the number of parish councillors will result in a poorer service to the people of Knebworth, as people won’t want to be on the parish council any more due to the workload and there will also be less diversity of people and opinions on it.
The intent behind the change is both to try and standardise it by size of parish, but also to ensure there are more competitive elections held. In the past quite often the parish council has been populated by people who stood and were elected by default, but only because less than 12 people put themselves forwards in the first place to be elected. In these situations everyone is automatically elected in an “uncontested” election.
I can see that having 25% fewer councillors may lead to more contested elections, which is clearly good for democracy in principle. However it will all boil down to the number and calibre of people who are prepared to stand. If people don’t want to stand as councillors in the first place, just changing the maximum number won’t help.
It’s worth also noting that the parish councillors are currently not representing any political parties, everybody on it today is there as an independent individual. This is not the case with some town councils, but it is in Knebworth.


The parish councillors do a lot of unpaid work
People may think that fewer councillors is a good thing for their council tax bills, but at a parish level the councillors are all unpaid and essentially volunteer a lot of their time to help the community.
Knebworth is very big already for a village and parish. It is getting to the size of a small town. The workload of the parish council and councillors tends to reflect this. It owns and has to maintain several important buildings and land which all need overseeing, including the village hall, several recreation grounds and the pavilion, allotments, public conveniences, some footpaths, Norton Green common and The Station pub.
The council does have a paid clerk, deputy clerk and groundsman, but the councillors get actively involved in several committees to run and oversee all these services, as well as speak to the public regularly on specific issues as they arise daily. In addition there is a large amount of effort on planning matters needed, which is particularly important given the proposed expansion of the village now and in the future. They also, with other volunteers, develop and enhance our Knebworth Neighbourhood Plan.

Nobody may want to do this in future
My fear is that the workload of the parish councillors as a whole will not reduce, in fact it will be going up as the village expands. By reducing the number of parish councillors it would mean the tasks are spread across fewer councillors. Considering what I said above, I can see a worst case situation where few , if any, people want to stand to be councillors because of the work needed.
In that situation I’m not quite sure what happens, but ultimately if the parish council cannot function and gets disbanded then I think that would be bad for the community, with no local people able to represent our community’s views and all the decisions for Knebworth made at a district or county level only. This happens in other “unparished” areas or towns without a town council, and there are moves to introduce more town councils.

Diversity of councillors should be encouraged
Fewer councillors means a reduced range of people with different backgrounds, skills and experiences on a key decision-making body for the local community. I hope to see an increase in age, gender, racial, socio-economic and other forms of diversity on the council. Clearly reducing the

Aligning elections is a good cost saving idea
I agree that the changes to the electoral cycle make sense, as holding parish council elections alongside district ones saves the council overall thousands of pounds.
The district council, who pay for running the elections, is in a financial position where it needs to find millions of pounds of savings over the next five years to balance the books. Anything we can do to help save money will avoid less palatable cuts to services or council departments.
Holding parish and district council elections together also will help voter turn out levels for the parish council elections, which is good for democracy.
If you care about this please don’t forget to feedback to the District Council by 9th May 2025.
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