Non Receipt of Agendas

Question

Basically, our clerks are being pressured/bullied/or have decided on their own accord to NOT send certain agendas to certain councillors. We have a new email address, but I prefer to use my borough council email and others also don't want to use the email address registered by the Town Council. The Town Council do not provide an allowance, computers or anything as the office still isn't open. We have had cpuncillors bully other councillors, etc, so even I have requested at least one vpuncillor to not email me. One cpuncillor hadn't even received her email address and password.
So, we request them to be sent to our home address. Sometimes they are sent, sometimes not. Sometimes they have incorrect postage. Sometimes  we have to email the clerks to ask for the agenda and don't receive it within 3 days that is required. It cannot be an IT issue, as that is 5 different domains not working and it's not the postal service as that's 4 different addresses which post is all getting lost.
What do I do? Ask that all be sent by recorded delivery and if they require an answer, to prepay it? Clerks often refuse and ignore emails. This has been happening for 3 yrs now to FIVE COUNCILLORS.

Answer 1

Or you could do as one of our errant councillors did when their agenda and papers didn't arrive (which we know was not an oversight!).

They attended the meeting, without raising the missing agendas or documents.
Then for every and each agenda item publicly stated, and requested that it be minuted, that the Clerk had failed to send any documents or agenda regarding the meeting.  As a direct result they had been forced to abstain from exercising their legal and democratic right to have an informed vote!

The Clerk was put in a very bad positions, and so were a couple of councillors who attempted to cover for the clerk, including the chair, especially as the meeting was being broadcast!

It has NEVER happened since!

Down_here

Comments

I'm giving this the best answer due to the Clerks being passive aggressive and its a toxic work environment. I am not blaming them; just stating what I see and assertiveness hasn't worked. Thank you for the input.

Answer 2

You could ask the clerk to provide a certificate of posting as evidence that the agenda had been sent to you, but this would require a visit to a Post Office, rather than dropping them in the nearest box. Regardless of any requests/pressure from other councillors, the clerk has a professional duty to supply you with an agenda at the appropriate time. I suggest that you speak to the clerk privately and ask for an honest version of events.

Answer 3

You should be using the town Council E mail account provided.  By using the Borough Council E mail, you would probably breaching the terms of using it, undermining the Borough Council data controls, and consuming data storage on their mail servers..  If  somebody sent you a message about a Town Council issue, you would then undermine the Borough Council GDPR compliance by introducing personal data that should not be collected or processed. If you get E mail about town council issues with malware, viruses or spyware, you could potentially bring down two councils ICT systems.

Comments

The problem is we aren't opening the office and I would have to spend manhours at home trying to figure out the email.
I haven't even received my password. I don't receive an allowance.

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What do you mean by figuring out the E mail? If you have figured out the Borough Council E mail, why would "figuring out" the Town Council E mail take so long? It wouldn't be overly difficult to ask the Clerk for your initial town Council password, and then reset it to one of your choosing.  With all due respect, you should have known that Town & Parish Councillors by tradition don't receive an allowance.

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One councillor has repeatedly asked for the password and never received it. She has never received her email address. This is a council who doesn't send out agendas by email and post if they don't want us at the meeting.
I spent much more time on Town Council than Borough and only two countries in the EU don't provide an allowance to Parish and Town Councillors.

In my home state of Minnesota, a Town Councillor of the same population would receive £55,000 a yr. The population is approximately 50,000.

Scotland provides a full time wage. Wales at least provides £180 a yr guaranteed
Even my cousin in law is a mayor of a little town of about 2000 people in Wisconsin and receives £8,000 a year.

So, I am expected to use my own Internet, my own PC, my own paper, my own printer to excess my Town Council email and print things because the Clerk refuses to open the office.
Around the world, England is known for its Town and Parish Councils being pale, male and stale. Why? Only financially independent people can primarily be Parish and Town Councillors. No carers allowance and it is women in England who primarily take after disabled, etc. If you are a single parent, of which around half of  children are born out of wedlock here, it will be very difficult. I walk everywhere, but not having a vehicle is an impediment to get to meetings. Given that 12% of men don't have drivers licences and 29% of women, this is an impediment. Shall we add that as a woman I may get harassed more than the typical man would. On my council it appears that it's pretty equal. So all of this adds to the reason that the rest of the world have Parish and Town Councils that reflect their populations more than England.

I know what you are saying, but if you look at the stats of England's and the rest of the world, you can see that it really is suffering from potentially great people who can't be because at least here in my town it costs money to be a Councillor.

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Hmm the issue of town and parish getting an allowance isn't really relevant to the original question, and I doubt that they would if introduced, resolve things like this.  You and the other affected cllrs should raise this with your external auditor and vote against approval of the AGAR if it doesn't mention the problems affecting you. I would reiterate that you should stop attempting to ask the clerk to  use the Borough Council resources. It won't address the root cause of the issue, and I would suggest using the staffing committee to "kick ass" as some say in your homeland. The clerk is clearly not doing the job properly and should not be allowed to do what she wants unilaterally.

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Awesome, thank you very much!