Did I miss something?

Sun 21 Jan, 11:36 (last edited on Mon 22 Jan, 08:33)

To (sort of) answer Malcolm's question needs a bit of history.

A parish by around the year 1000 was the geographical area  that a church (uniquely at that point, Catholic) looked after - and until the Reformation, a surprising proportion of what we'd now call public services (like education, maintenance of many bridges and looking after the poor and sick) was provided by ecclesiastical institutions - often monasteries.

After the Reformation, most of these civic responsibilities were transferred to local parishes (there were no more monasteries) - all, by definition then Anglican, and the overwhelming majority simply inherited the geographical boundaries of their Catholic predecessor. In rural England, there've been next to no new Anglican churches since the mid-1500s (and therefore no need to review parish boundaries), though quite a few Anglican churches have been rebuilt - and practically all rural Catholic, Nonconformist or Eastern Orthodox churches (there really are a couple) postdate the Reformation.

During the 19th century, there was a formal split between the pastoral responsibilities of Anglican parishes (essentially a matter for the Anglican Church, managed locally by Parochial Church Councils, elected from members of the local Anglican church) and the civic responsibilities of an area, which, at the most local level in rural England, became subject to civic Parish Councils, elected by all local voters. A lot of public comment (eg: practically every edition of the Vicar of Dibley TV show) gets the two kinds of parish council confused. Communities smaller than a District that are now called Town (like Charlbury or Chippy) take some pride in calling their legislature a Town Council: but they have the same legal status as a civic Parish Council.

Now we have an extraordinarily robust system for matching Parliamentary and higher-level local electoral boundaries to population shifts, with a formal system for regular reviews. But to trigger a review of a parish boundary, the Boundary Commission needs to receive a petition from (in Oxfordshire) the County,  the District or the Town/Parish Council: there's no formalised system for regular reviews - and next to no public interest in creating such a system.

The result, in most of rural England, is visible in every Rogationtide boundary walk. In Charlbury, our boundary walk frequently moves into and out of land now owned by the Rotherwicks - because the boundary of Charlbury parish is practically unchanged since pre-Reformation times, whereas ownership of many bits of land has changed every few generations.  And after a thousand years of English urbanisation, in many cases there's been no parish boundary change at all at any point in that period.

So, whereas the population of Charlbury parish is around 3,000 the population of Bicester and Abingdon parishes is about 30,000. They're both practically hamlets compared to Northampton, which has a population of about 130,000. 

Actually, there are a number of parishes round here with populations well below 1,000 that have monthly Parish Council meetings and even tinier ones that meet quarterly or annually - and still have serious agendas, and merit attendance from local District and/or County Councillors (which in the Charlbury Ward means the Leader of the County Council). Meanwhile, virtually all parliamentary constituencies in the UK at the next election will have a population of about 80,000.