As a result of the Covid-19/Coronavirus pandemic, the Government has
introduced a number of changes to the way that Local Council’s and
Parish Council deal with public meetings and Annual General Meetings
(AGM’s) This has resulted in changes to Local Government legislation
which took effect from early April 2020. For Parish Councils this
affects us in three ways:-
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The requirement to hold AGM’s has been temporarily suspended (Possibly until next year) This means the current arrangements will continue for the foreseeable future i.e Ian will remain chair with Clive as vice-chair.
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Parish Council meetings should only be held if they are absolutely necessary.
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If meetings do need to take place these should be done remotely using an alternative communication platform (i.e Google hangouts, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, Skype, Slack or Zoom) However, whatever platform you use it must be accessible by the general public and you would be required to advertise the necessary links/passwords to join the meeting. This would have to be advertised on the Parish Council’s website and notice boards.
Having discussed the current situation with Ian this evening we have
decided to temporarily suspend future Parish Council meetings. In the
meantime we are still able to pay for the ongoing costs of running the
Parish Council i.e paying annual insurances, making the annual
donations, subscriptions etc as these have already been agreed when we
signed off this year’s budget in January. I will simply ask Ian and
one other Councillor to sign the cheques for all payments that are due
and when we do eventually have our next formal meeting these can be
retrospectively approved.
We should continue with our Parish Council business as normal as long
as it does not require a new decision to be made. I will send out a
separate e-mail about this in the next few days.
There are other tasks that I still need to continue with such as
completing the year end accounts and getting these signed off our
auditor but even here, the deadline for submitting the accounts has
been put back by a couple of months.
As we all know, the situation with the Coronavirus changes by the week
and we will just need to take a flexible approach to how we conduct
Parish Council business in the coming weeks and months. I hope you all
understand and agree with the decision to temporarily suspend our
meetings. However, please feel free to contact me to discuss. I will
try and keep you all updated as the situation changes.
If you need any further information you can contact your Parish Councillor