Impasse on paying for parishes
A TEMPORARY deadlock has been reached over the thorny issue of how parish councils should be funded. Parishes such as Barming and Tovil do not
yet want any further changes to the concurrent functions grant that Maidstone Borough Council has paid to them for many years. ButMBC is adamant that a serv-
ice level agreement (SLA) should replace the current system, which is based on a per capita formula. That grant was cut by 30% this
year. The borough, under severe financial constraints, had origi- nally wanted to do away with the grant completely but bowed to
pressure from the parishes. The borough also agreed to a comprehensive review of the funding process. However, the review group has failed to
MAIDSTONE Borough Council’s total budget for concurrent functions grant in 2010-11 was £424,000 for the 35 parishes. The level of grant paid to parishes ranged from £3,521 (East Sutton) to £47,011 (Boxley), with an average of £12,105. The formula used was a fixed amount to each parish (£2,261) plus a per capita payment of £6 based on the electoral register. The grant’s main purpose is to avoid “double taxation” where
the costs of a certain service are charged twice to local taxpay- ers because the parish provides a service but the borough still charges parishioners (via its universal council tax) for the equivalent services it provides in unparished areas.
Funeral director looks for another move
FUNERAL director Paul Rowland has made another attempt to move his business to a house in London Road, Allington. Maidstone Council last year refused his application to ex-
tend a double garage at 335 London Road to form his new business headquarters, which are currently at Mid Kent Shopping Centre (right). The council’s refusal, upheld on appeal, was due to a “sig- nificant risk to highway safety and the free flow of traffic” at a busy junction. Mr Rowland believes he has found a site, which involves
the conversion of a physiotherapy and sports clinic at 116a London Road, which overcomes this obstacle. His planning statement says: “It is reasonable to estimate that a clinic with two consulting rooms operating half-hour appointments over a 10-hour working day would generate well over 100 vehi- cle movements per day, taking account of staff as well as patients. “The proposed use, by contrast, is unlikely to generate that number of movements in the whole of
a working week…a total of some 54 movements per week. “The proposed usewill therefore lead to a substantial reduction in traffic generated by the site, re- sulting in a net benefit both to traffic flows and, more importantly, to highway safety.”
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make the hoped-for progress. This was re- ported to an extraordinary meeting of the Kent Association of Local Councils (KALC), attended by representatives of two- dozen councils at Maidstone Town Hall. The meeting heard talks had broken down because the Cabinet member for community services, Cllr John Wilson, insisted there was no alternative to a proposed parish services scheme – an SLA between Maidstone and the parishes. KALC secretary Cllr Clive Eng-
lish described the proposed SLA as “incredibly bureaucratic” and
also excluded “huge swathes” of what is covered at present by concurrent functions. Parish representatives de-
cided it would be premature to introduce an SLA given its com- plexity, the need to clarify nu- merous issues and the as-yet unknown ramifications of Gov- ernment plans for local author- ity funding and its localism agenda. Themeeting agreed that it did
not rule out the concept of an SLA but wished to see the ex- isting concurrent functions scheme continue for 2012-13. It was further resolved that, in
the interim, a pilot study should be conducted with the help of Bredhurst and Staplehurst parish councils.
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