Parish Duties & Responsibilities
Parish councils are the tier of local government closest to their electorate and best placed to serve local communities. They are local authorities created by statute and can only act where there is an express power or duty.
What we have to do is provide burial facilities, in Martlesham the parish church provides these and in return we help maintain the grounds of the church. We also have to consider requests for allotments and if we consider the request reasonable have to arrange for these.
If you want to know what we can do you need to trawl through acts of parliament going back many years. For a quick summary of these follow this link Parish Council Responsibilities
For more detail please see this document from NALC (The National Association of Councils)
However, Section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972 gives Town, Parish & Community Councils in England & Wales the ability to spend a limited amount of money for purposes for which they have no other specific statutory power.
This means the council can undertake projects that benefit the whole community, or a section of it, even if there is no specific authorisation in other acts of parliament. This allows us to act with some discretion to take on activities. The ability to give grants to local organisations is probably the best known example of the use of this power. To prevent abuse of this there is a limit on how much we can spend on these projects per year.