Many people have little idea as to the role of a Town or Parish Clerk, largely because they have little real comprehension of the extent of the possible role of a Town or Parish Council. So let us start at the beginning.

Parish Councils came into being in 1895, taking over many responsibilities that were previously undertaken by the Church, ie the Vestry, forerunner of the Parochial Church Council. Edenbridge's Parish Council was one of the first batch to be established in the country and is now obviously over 100 years old. There is actually no difference, in law, between a parish and town council; the name merely reflects the size of the community - in Edenbridge the title changed in 1982.

So what does a town or parish council do? Being a uniquely British concept what a local council does is bound up with ancient legislation, some indeed dating back to the 1880s, before local councils were even set up! There was no clear idea of what local councils should do, so the law was established which laid down what they must do and, recognising the significant differences which existed between parishes, what they could do. All they had to do was to hold a minimum number of meetings, maintain accounts and only one mandatory function, namely if  six electors wanted them they had to provide allotments. This is still all we actually have to do, that is our legal responsibility.

It soon became apparent that different parishes wanted to do different things. The way round this was to grant parishes powers under which they could do things. Thus in 1888 came the first of a long series of Local Government Acts, which started to clarify how councils should operate and the differences between councils as a corporate being and the role of individual councillors. By 1890, the Public Health Amendment Act allowed the closing of public parks so they could be used for specific community events, such as festivals, provided these were not on a Sunday, and we could hire out boats on our pleasure lakes, if we had one, and improve public walks. By 1894 many more previous church functions became redefined as civil and we could actually start doing things and spending money. By 1899 there were laws about Common Land, the creation of local byelaws and the provision of recreation grounds.

Issues had to be dealt with by giving powers and not creating responsibilities because not all parishes had boating lakes, or even commons. Subsequently powers were granted to do all sorts of things, including managing harbours - Broadstairs has one but Hever doesn't. Over the years the range of powers has changed and the background laws have changed. What was called an 'allotment' in 1895 has been changed by a succession of Acts, in 1922, 1925 and 1950, and today there is an as yet unresolved issue which is of fundamental importance, even in Edenbridge. Is an allotment only to be used to produce fruit and vegetables for the plot holder? And what do you mean by fruit - trees are generally banned from allotments, but what about apple trees, and is a grape vine a tree or not? Often English law is changed not by an Act of Parliament but by Case Law, where a judge in deciding a particular case comes up with a decision which seems to marginally change our understanding of the law, or clarifies something which might have been unclear in the way the law was written. Most people think the purpose of an allotment is to grow produce for the allotment holder. If, in a good season, they had some surplus they could quietly give it away, or perhaps swap it with produce of another allotment holder. But what does the Act actually say? Well, the wording is sufficiently vague that someone has challenged that understanding because they wish to sell their surplus; now it seems a judge has agreed with them and DEFRA, one part of Government, has issued advice which has been contradicted by another part of Government, the ODPM. Does this solve the problem? Well, not quite, because the new ruling says that while surpluses can be sold the activity must not become commercial. So if I work 20 allotments and all I am growing is Brussells sprouts, is it a commercial operation, because I certainly can't eat the sprouts from 20 plots myself? The poor Clerk's role is to be the legal adviser, and that knowledge needs to be kept up-dated, which means every day checking Government advice emails for things which may affect us locally.

Almost every year now there is a major revision of the powers. There are specific laws about Transport, War Memorials, Planning, Road Traffic, Refuse Disposal, Public Health, Open Spaces, Litter, Environmental Protection, Disused Burial Grounds and Cemeteries, Cycle Tracks, Charities, and there are Audit Regulations. And then there is an even greater stream of Case Law interpretations and exhortations from Government to expand what we get involved with. The problem is that we can still only do what the law permits, rather than doing anything which is legal. By contrast, in France, local councils, the communes, have a power of general competence which means they can do anything which is legal; why the Government here doesn't give towns and parishes that flexibility is a mystery.

So if we have a power to deal with road traffic, transport and highways, what does it mean? Are we responsible for pot holes? Well, no. And here lies the problem for the public. Let us take an easy example - street lighting. Who's responsible for the street lighting in Edenbridge? The answer is so straightforward and easy to explain to any resident - about 270 belong to the Highways Authority, so phone Kent, these all have a six figure alpha-numeric code on the columns. Then about 290 belong to the Town Council, most of which will have a three digit blue number. And West Kent Housing own a few in Ash Close. And street lights on new developments, such as the Bovis site, are the developer's responsibility for the first 12/18 months. And in Crown Road you will find one which is privately owned (and switched on and off from the owner's porch). And then there are about eight which we say are not ours (and for which we pay nothing to Seeboard) but which Kent say are not theirs. It's so simple!

So what do we actually do in Edenbridge? You will probably know that we own and maintain the Market Yard car park, Stangrove Park, Blossoms Park, the Recreation Ground, Marsh Green, land at Mowshurst, land at Forge Green, Pound Green in Lingfield Road, the Peace Garden at the corner of Hever Road, Croft Lane from the Primary School entrance to the car park, and the cemetery. We own Church House, which we lease to the Museum, and Doggetts Barn, and are the custodian trustees of the WI Hall. We help maintain nearly 50 kilometres of public footpaths, and publish Walk Packs. Our Footpaths Committee, largely made up of volunteers, is probably not only the oldest Footpaths committee anywhere in the country, but possibly the  oldest parish committee of any description, celebrating its 100th birthday last year.

In the last few years we have become involved in Government consultations on the M25, night flying at Gatwick, Regional Planning Policy, Tourism Development, both at a local and Regional level, Community Safety issues and now we are to become involved in helping to sustain the local economy and other bright ideas. In the last year we have read and responded to nearly 800 pages of Government consultations; most of these will also have landed on your Clerk's desk.

Unfortunately this all takes time and that costs money. Years ago we were a fairly wealthy council - we received the Business Rate from all our local companies. When Mrs Thatcher took that away, we lost 40% of our income but still had to maintain the parks, street lights etc which we had created and bought when money seemed plentiful. In recent years Gordon Brown has hit us with a series of his hidden stealth taxes - his changes have, for example, loaded the NI contributions, raised our pension costs and directly put up salary costs. The only money we receive is the local Council Tax plus whatever we can earn or acquire by way of grant - we have successfully received grants of over £750,000 in the last 10 years. But if we continue to be that successful and our expenditure or income rises to over £500,000 pa for 3 years we will have to spend perhaps an extra £20,000 pa to change our accounts to the full-blown district/county accounting system and regretfully join the Best Value brigade!

All the tiers of local government are now under extreme financial pressure. This Government keeps coming up with new ideas and responsibilities but rarely any money. Last week's Queen's Speech was a classic - at least 10 bills planned which seem to involve the giving of powers to local councils, to tackle such things as knife crime, but no mention of any funding. They gave us money for our Community Warden and then announced they would stop the funding, so the burden falls on local taxpayers again. This is the heart of the problem that Sevenoaks District Council has with its budget and why they have closed their Local Office. We are in detailed discussions to see if, together, we can produce a One-Stop Shop in Edenbridge, where, in some form, we can offer to our residents, and indeed yours, access to the services of Town, District and County Councils, at a price which the wider community can afford.

But what about the dead sheep in the river? - I hear you ask. Regrettably we tend to have two or three calls a year from people who have seen dead sheep floating down the river or stuck against the banks, all having floated down on floods from across the county border. And if you find one, what do you do? Of course you phone the local council and hope they will deal with it. There is an almost infinite range of similar questions we are asked, to which hopefully we know the answer or at least know where to start looking for it. What I can tell you is that it is physically much harder trying to get a live sheep out of the river than a dead one - their wool is extremely heavy, they are scared and they just don't want to saved by three or four people up to their knees in water and who can't see where the river bank actually is - we've done it once and I don't fancy doing it again!

So what does a Clerk do? Perhaps the fact that many Councils now call them Chief Executives gives a clue. I am the legal expert, staff manager, have control of finance, Health & Safety, the conduct of Councillors, publicity, tourism development, helping with maintenance of footpaths, Cemetery Registrar and hopefully being a source of useful advice about anything 'Council' that residents may want to know. I can't do everything everybody wants but sometimes, between us, we can make things happen for the better.

Some final thoughts - where is the Government going with regard to its reorganisation of local government? The first votes for Regional Assemblies were a smack in the eye for John Prescott, but there are left those areas with undemocratic Regional Assemblies with no local accountability, just as we have here in the South East. Just last Friday staff from DEFRA were stating that they expected the push towards Unitary Authorities to be moved up the time agenda - 2008 was the guess. Watch this space - Sevenoaks, Tonbridge & Malling and Tunbridge Wells? David Milliband, the new Minister of Communities and Local Government, has just said that "central and local government need to work together - not to talk at each other". Excuse me but talking is one thing but who is meant to be listening to whom? In 'Vibrant Local Leadership' published earlier this year what did John Prescott's ODPM mean by "In developing neighbourhood arrangements the government is interested in the potential a range of governance approaches tailored to local circumstances"? Simultaneously another ODPM publication referred to "the Quality Parish scheme enables parishes to do more on behalf of their district and county councils". In other papers you will read that "more devolvement to SOME town councils is envisaged". What do they mean? We don't precisely know, but we can start to read between the lines. Indeed we know that the ODPM is shortly to visit Edenbridge to talk to us about the concept of "hubs and spokes" ie with small rural local councils being made to work through rural service centres, with possible arrangements for some equalisation of funding, whatever that means. In the smaller parishes the concept of a part-time clerk working from home now gets caught up with the Disabled Access Regulations and other aspects of legislation.

What is certain is that the role of local councils and clerks is going to be increasingly subject to change as the structure of local government above us is changed. The problem is that when these changes come we may not then have time to try to get the dead sheep out of the river, so who will?