Talk:Folkestone and Hythe District

Comment

The facts in this article are incorrect. As is generally the case with all such local government districts, there are lower tiers of government - the town and the civil parish. Within Shepway there are 30 of the latter which are listed here; and each of those has its own elected members. Among them is, for example, Folkestone, which has its own council to run the town. The parish council has certain duties and responsibilities which are not the same as those dealt with by the higher local government body - the district Council. The latter also has elected members (there are 46 of them), and these are elected within the wards quoted in the article. So a voter in Hythe votes for a parish councillor and a district councillor (and a Member of Parliament of course). A voter in Folkestone votes for a town and a district councillor. This should be made clearer in the article which tends simply to talk about the wards (ie divisions) of the district as a whole. Peter Shearan 13:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Further thoughts

Over two years ago I made the comment above. I can see that there is still confusion regarding wards vs civil parishes, since the wards have names - eg Elham and Stelling Minnis, but parishes have separate names Elham and Stelling Minnis. the wards are made up of equal parts of the District, so that ward councillors represent equal number of voters, whereas the parishes are often the result of church boundaries and can be of many different sizes. Six of the parishes are so small that they only have what is called a parish meeting, as opposed to a parish council. Hence the names of wards should not be written Elham and Stelling Minnis. The civil parish is in fact the third tier of local government, below the District.

In addition I am proposing to make some changes to the remainder of the article, using the ideas set out in the Wiki suggested layout for settlements. It contains a good resumé of headings which are useful in this instance as well: history; governance; geography; economy; transport; etc. I trust that other editors will find it useful, and that it is not reverted out of hand whithou due consideration of its merits - as happened on another occasion I attempted this. Peter Shearan (talk) 15:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)