Published: 9 September 2025
At its meeting on 16 July 2025, Amber Valley Borough Council agreed to undertake a Borough-wide Community Governance Review.
A Community Governance Review (CGR) is the legal process used to consider parish arrangements, as outlined in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007.
The Review can consider:
• Amending parish boundaries
• Creating, merging or abolishing parishes
• The naming of parishes and the style of new parishes
• The electoral arrangements for parishes (council size and parish warding), and
• Grouping parishes under a common parish council or de-grouping parishes.
The Council believes that parish councils play an important role in terms of community empowerment at the local level and wants to ensure that parish governance in our borough continues to be robust, representative and able to meet the challenges that lie before it. As such, the Council wants to ensure that the boundaries and electoral arrangements of our parishes are appropriate, equitable and readily understood by their electorate.
Additionally, the Council has a duty to keep its area under review. The government’s guidance states that it is good practice for councils to conduct a Community Governance Review every 10-15 years and a significant period has elapsed since the parish arrangements in our area were last assessed. It is therefore felt appropriate to undertake a review of the whole council area in order to assess whether any changes in population, shifts in ‘natural settlements’ caused by new development and other such anomalies necessitate the current arrangements being amended.
The Borough Council is today publishing two documents. A Terms of Reference document which provides the framework that the Council will work within when creating the review’s recommendations, as well as an Initial Consultation Document which outlines, for each parish in the Borough, possible amendments to existing arrangements. Copies of both documents are available on the Council’s website at this link: Community Governance Review.
We are inviting all stakeholders such as town and parish councils, elected representatives and members of the public to read these documents and complete a short survey to provide their views. The survey can be accessed here.
The survey will remain open for 8 weeks until Wednesday 8 October
