Parish council proposes to rename itself

Within a year or two, we'll be electing a mayor to run the whole of Sussex and it looks as though a big, new "unitary authority" will take over everything that is currently done by our district council in Chichester and West Sussex County Council. That could leave a deep gap between our community and this new body.

We, your parish council, believe it's time to think about how our tiny community sees its position and influence, and how others see us – and that might start with our name, which is a historic anachronism dating back to when church and civic parishes were the same thing. The Local Government Act 1972 allowed parish councils to be renamed as "village" or "community" councils, and that might at least remove the frequent confusion between your local representatives and the local church parish, which still has the same name. We're not one village but our council does represent us as one community.

The name is outdated in another way: Dumpford is not included although it's now the largest part of our parish population – 114 residents compared with 74 in Chithurst and 102 in the rest of the parish. Yet most people, inside and outside the parish, refer to the whole community as Trotton.

We are therefore proposing to apply to rename the parish council as "Trotton community council". The process to do this is relatively simple (via an application to Chichester District Council) but we would only wish to go ahead if this had the broad support of residents, so we'd like to ask every resident to answer a simple survey, either online (via the "More information" link below) or by calling the clerk and asking for a paper copy or to do it by telephone.