Milton Keynes City Council (MKCC) agreed to undertake a Community Governance Review (CGR) of all 48 parishes in the city. Following informal consultation with all parishes, we used their responses to develop our draft proposals for the following Parish and Town Council areas:  

1. Abbey Hill
2. Bletchley and Fenny Stratford
3. Central Milton Keynes
4. Great Linford
5. Shenley Brook End and Tattenhoe
6. Shenley Church End
7. Walton
8. Wavendon
9. Whitehouse
10. Woburn Sands 

The Terms of Reference set out how the review would be conducted and the matters on which the review was to focus.  

What is a Community Governance Review?     

A CGR is a way for Local Authorities to make sure that at parish level, governance arrangements are working as efficiently and effectively as they should be. This is achieved by asking the public, local councils and any interested parties whether they feel their communities are suitably represented and whether parishes would like to see any changes made to their current governance arrangements. 

A CGR is an opportunity to change parish names, warding patterns, the number of parish councillors and in certain circumstances, amend external parish boundaries, and create / merge / abolish parishes. 

A CGR can be a review of the whole, or part of the city. This review is for the whole city, however the Draft Recommendations to be consulted on focused on the parish areas named above. Draft recommendations also reflected that community governance remained unchanged for all other parishes.     

Who will undertake the Community Governance Review? 

MKCC, as the principal council, is responsible for carrying out the review. The final recommendations from the review must be agreed by Full Council. Final proposals will be presented to Full Council for approval in October 2025. 

The timetable shows the key dates when the council will consider reports and make decisions relating to this review. If the review concludes that changes should be made, and these are approved by Full council, then MKCC will make and publish a reorganisation order to put the changes into effect. It will conclude in time to be reflected in new electoral registers to be published on 1 December 2025. 

Timetable  

A CGR must by statute be completed within a 12-month period from the day on which it commences. The CGR begins when the Council publishes its Terms of Reference and concludes when it publishes the recommendations made in the review.  

The below is an indicative timetable and is therefore subject to alteration: 

Consultation   

Before making any recommendations or publishing final proposals, the council must take full account of the views of the local people and comply with the statutory consultative requirements.  

Read the initial draft recommendations the council has published. 

The CGR consultation ran for weeks beginning Thursday 19 June 2025 and finished on Thursday 11 September 2025. We are finalising our final recommendations, and these will be considered at Full Council on Wednesday 22 October.