However, unlike their continental European counterparts, parish councils are not principal authorities, and in most cases have a relatively minor role in local government.

[11] This consistency was a result of canon law which prized the status quo in issues between local churches and so made boundary changes and sub-division difficult.

Later, the church replaced the manor court as the rural administrative centre, and levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe.

[8] In the medieval period, responsibilities such as relief of the poor passed increasingly from the lord of the manor to the parish's rector, who in practice would delegate tasks among his vestry or the (often well-endowed) monasteries.

As the number of ratepayers of some parishes grew, it became increasingly difficult to convene meetings as an open vestry.

The legitimacy of the parish vestry came into question, and the perceived inefficiency and corruption inherent in the system became a source for concern in some places.

[8] During the 17th century it was found that the 1601 Poor Law did not work well for very large parishes, which were particularly common in northern England.

In the late 19th century, most of the "ancient" (a legal term equivalent to time immemorial) irregularities inherited by the civil parish system were cleaned up, and the majority of exclaves were abolished.

The census of 1911 noted that 8,322 (58%) of "parishes" in England and Wales were not geographically identical when comparing the civil to the ecclesiastical form.

The urban parishes continued to be used as an electoral area for electing guardians to the poor law unions.

[5] Since the beginning of the 21st century, numerous parish councils have been created, including some relatively large urban ones.

A number of parishes have been created in places which used to have their own borough or district council; examples include Daventry (2003), Folkestone (2004), Kidderminster (2015) and Sutton Coldfield (2016).

The trend towards the creation of geographically large unitary authorities has been a spur to the creation of new parishes in some larger towns which were previously unparished, in order to retain a local tier of government; examples include Shrewsbury (2009), Salisbury (2009), Crewe (2013) and Weymouth (2019).

Parishes can also be abolished where there is evidence that this is in response to "justified, clear and sustained local support" from the area's inhabitants.

Parish or town councils have very few statutory duties (things they are required to do by law) but have a range of discretionary powers which they may exercise voluntarily.

The role they play can vary significantly depending on the size, resources and ability of the council, but their activities can include any of the following:[24][25][26] Parish councils have powers to provide and manage various local facilities; these can include allotments, cemeteries, parks, playgrounds, playing fields and village greens, village halls or community centres, bus shelters, street lighting, roadside verges, car parks, footpaths, litter bins and war memorials.

[4][24] The Localism Act 2011 allowed eligible parish councils to be granted a "general power of competence" which allows them within certain limits the freedom to do anything an individual can do provided it is not prohibited by other legislation, as opposed to being limited to the powers explicitly granted to them by law.

As of 2020[update], eight parishes in England have city status, each having a long-established Anglican cathedral: Chichester, Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Ripon, Salisbury, Truro and Wells.

In many cases small settlements, today popularly termed villages, localities or suburbs, are in a single parish which originally had one church.

For example, Birmingham has two parishes (New Frankley and Sutton Coldfield), Oxford has four, and the Milton Keynes urban area has 24.

A civil parish can range in area from a small village or town ward to a large tract of mostly uninhabited moorland in the Cheviots, Pennines or Dartmoor.

The next two smallest are parishes in built up areas: Chester Castle (Cheshire) at 0.0168 square miles (0.044 km2; 4.4 ha; 10.8 acres) (no recorded population) and Hamilton Lea (Leicestershire) at 0.07 square miles (0.18 km2; 18 ha; 45 acres) (1,021 residents at the 2021 census).

These were Chester Castle (in the middle of Chester city centre), Newland with Woodhouse Moor, Beaumont Chase, Martinsthorpe, Meering, Stanground North (subsequently abolished), Sturston, Tottington, and Tyneham (subsequently merged).

In the 2011 census, Newland with Woodhouse Moor and Beaumont Chase reported inhabitants, and there were no new deserted parishes recorded.

These anomalies resulted in a highly localised difference in applicable representatives on the national level, justices of the peace, sheriffs, bailiffs with inconvenience to the inhabitants.

If a parish was split then churchwardens, highway wardens and constables would also spend more time or money travelling large distances.

The scenario may also have arisen originally as an attempt to diversify the lord's (or overlord's) interests, or from a large burial ground in an urban setting.

They had to attend a distant church and/or the manorial court for certain tithes, rates, baptisms, marriages, funerals, or to obtain regular poor relief and most forms of education, charitable alms and hospitalry.

The end of manorial courts coincided with growing agricultural innovation, fragmentation of land ownership and housing growth.

This meant such anomalies were irrelevant nuisances with a real economic cost in distance of administration and confusion.