Civil parishes in Lancashire

A civil parish is a subnational entity, forming the lowest unit of local government in England.

At the 2001 census, there were 587,074 people living in the 219 parishes, accounting for 41.5 per cent of the county's population.

Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses; the work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways.

[7] Urban civil parishes continued to exist, and were generally coterminous with the Urban District, Municipal Borough or County Borough in which they were situated; many large towns contained a number of parishes, and these were usually merged into one.

[9] Recent governments have encouraged the formation of town and parish councils in unparished areas, and the Local Government and Rating Act 1997 gave local residents the right to demand the creation of a new civil parish.