Parish Council
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This section of the Barrowford website gives details of the activities of the Parish Council and includes details of:

  • Elected members of the Parish Council, including contact details;
  • Calendar of council meeting dates, these give residents an opportunity to present views to the Council;
  • Detailed information about each Council Meeting, including agenda, minutes and supporting papers;
  • Working Group information, carrying out detailed activities directed by the council;
  • An electronic copy of the June 2008 Parish Plan report that has guided much of the recent Council activity;
  • Miscellaneous documents the council is making available through a new Model Publication scheme, which was adopted in December 2008.  The aim of the scheme is to make routine council documents more widely available to the public.  Barrowford Parish Council is adhering to the requirements through this website publication.
A brief history of the local government of Barrowford follows, enjoy!

2008 marked the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Barrowford Parish Council and its impact on local life and decision making is growing year by year.  One day they may have the powers returned that were stripped from the old Urban District Council and the political life of Barrowford will have come full circle.

Barrowford’s first glimpses of self determination in a political sense began with the formation of the Barrowford and Brogden with Admergill Local School Board formed in December 1874 which consisted of seven members and had three schools under its control.  During the first fifteen years the number of children receiving an education doubled and in 1896 they spent £9000, a considerable sum in those days, on the building of Rushton Street School. This local Board ran until September 1903 when it was taken over by the Education Authority.

The next step in the local political scene was the Formation of Barrowford Urban District Council in 1897.  The Urban District Council ran for nearly eighty years and was both a blessing and a curse with the provision of affordable social housing but at the cost of some of the oldest and most historically interesting parts of the village.  The creation and layout of the park jointly with benefactors and the local people will be their everlasting epitaph.

Big is beautiful was the catchword of the early seventies when countless small towns and villages were brought together to form new faceless local authorities.  Barrowford was swallowed up by Pendle in 1974 and an era of very local services ended. But the Urban District Council was not forgotten by older villagers and when the chance to have a Neighbourhood Watch Group came in the late seventies and early eighties it was grasped and indirectly led to the formation of the Parish Council in 1988.

The Parish Council started life meeting at the Civic Hall and their only asset was allotments which the Local Authority had an obligation to hand over and were willing and eager to do so as by and large allotment sites, although an essential service, are a drain on resources.

 

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