1.0 Current governance arrangements and history of the area

Current governance arrangements

1.1 Hudswell and District Parish Council is situated within the Upper Dales division and is part of the Richmond and Northallerton parliamentary constituency.

1.2 Hudswell and District Parish Council is formed by a group of civil parishes as follows:

Civil Parishes within Parish Council	Electors (2025)	Councillors
Hudswell civil parish	260	5
Stainton civil parish	12	1
Walburn civil parish	4
Downholme civil parish	34
TOTALS	310	6

A map of a town AI-generated content may be incorrect.

History of the area

1.3 Under the Local Government Act, each parish within a group of parishes forming a parish council must return at least one councillor, and the same person cannot be elected to more than one seat in a parish council.

1.4 It has been identified that Hudswell and District Parish Council does not currently meet the above requirements as Stainton, Walburn, and Downholme civil parishes collectively return a single councillor.

1.5 The legal order cited as ‘Hudswell and District Parish Council Order 2013’ putting in place the current arrangements for the parish council is dated 2013 and was put in place by the former Richmondshire District Council. It has therefore been agreed that a review of the governance arrangements was needed to ensure the governance arrangements were fit for purpose and compliant in future.

1.6 Prior to the review commencing, contact was made with the parish council and the relevant division member and the identified issue and potential solutions were explored. The parish council provided a preferred solution, which formed the basis of the first stage of consultation for this review.

1.7 The preferred potential solution involved merging all existing parishes within the group, to form a new single civil parish, with no need for a grouping arrangement, as follows:

Parish Council	Electors (2025)	Councillors
Hudswell and District civil parish	310	6
TOTALS	310	6

1.8 The parish council felt that the whole parish council area would be better served by councillors representing the council area equally and maintains the council size of 6. The proposal recognises that there are low elector numbers in 3 of the existing civil parishes (Stainton, Walburn, and Downholme), collectively only with 50 electors.

Five year electorate forecast

1.9 The 2030 electorate forecast for all parishes in the group is expected to be 321 (calculated using 2024 electorate) from 310, which is not a large increase, as the area is very rural.

2.0 Assessment of consultation responses for Hudswell and District Parish Council

2.1 The following table shows the number of households written to, with the number of consultation responses received, and response rate.

Households sent CGR consultation letter	201
Consultation responses received	5
Response rate	2.5 %

2.2 Consultation letters were sent to all households in the Hudswell and District Parish Council area, being those directly affected by this review.

2.3 A copy of the consultation survey can be found at Annex 14A. A summary of consultation responses received can be found at Annex 14B.

2.4 The response rate in the table above was calculated by comparing the number of consultation responses with the number of households directly consulted by means of a letter sent to all properties in the areas under review.

2.5 Of the 5 respondents, 4 reported that they are residents of the parish council area, and one response was from the Parish Council.

2.6 100% of respondents were in favour of the proposed solution.

2.7 Reasons given in support all include reference to the proposal being a ‘practical’ solution to the identified problem in respect of the current arrangements.

3.0 Final assessment and draft recommendations

3.1 As all responses indicated support for the proposal set out in stage 1 consultation, it is proposed to proceed with the option consulted on to merge all 4 civil parishes within the existing council area to form a single civil parish.

3.2 A map of the proposal is shown below:

A map of a city AI-generated content may be incorrect.

3.3 A list of recommendations can be viewed below:

Recommendation 1 – to amalgamate the civil parishes of Hudswell, Stainton, Walburn and Downholme to create a single civil parish (as shown in the map above)

Recommendation 2 – that new single parish be called Hudswell and District

Recommendation 3 – that new single civil parish to have a council named Hudswell and District Parish Council (as current)

Recommendation 4 – that council to have a council size of 6 (as current)

Recommendation 5 – That the new arrangements take affect administratively on 01 April 2027 with elections to the new arrangements at the next scheduled elections in May 2027, and that changes to the electoral register required for the above take effect on the revised publication ahead of that election (planned for December 2026).

3.4 The recommendations detailed above will form the basis of the Stage 2 consultation which will commence on 19 March 2026.

Annex 14A – Consultation survey

Annex 14B – Summary of consultation responses