ANNUAL PARISH MEETING TIMING

Question

At our Annual Parish meeting this year "my fellow Cllrs" tried a new approach ie holding it on a Saturday (midday)  hoping for a good attendance driven mainly by the opposition to a proposed  big new development .    As the chairman stood up the former clerk's husband  opined that the meeting must be considered informal as the LGA 1972 requires that it cannot not commence before 6pm and suggested that a separate formal meeting must be convened later.   The Chairman was obviously taken aback but continued with the informal meeting ,   So does a separate meeting have to be held ?

Answer 1

The Annual Parish Meeting can be held anytime and they are relatively informal meetings anyway, because they are meetings of the electorate in the Parish and not a Parish Council Meeting.  Councillors if attending are considered members of the public. Annual Parish Meetings just consist of annual reports from the Chair and other organisations within the parish.  No decisions can be made.  If questions not on the agenda are asked, the reply is something like - thank you for your comments, this will appear on a future agenda for consideration.

Answer 2

Actually, the former Clerk's husband is right.   The Local Government Act 1972 does state that the meeting can't take place before 6.00pm but there is no effective policing of this requirement so a bit of a nonsense.  The meeting is a meeting of electors and it's only a tradition that the parish council must convene the meeting although the Chair of the parish council, where there is one, is required to chair the parish meeting.  I know quite a few parishes have done exactly what you've done and rescheduled the meeting for a weekend in an attempt to get more people to attend and some combine it with other events or activities.  There are no penalties for not convening a parish meeting; it simply isn't the responsibility of the council.  Many argue that it is a rather antiquated way of enabling residents to meet and express an opinion on matters relating to the area but now that we have to admit members of the public to parish council meetings, have the Transparency Act and a whole host of other regulations requiring that the public are made aware of the workings of the local authority, it might be considered to be no longer necessary.  Not something to worry about in my opinion.

Comments

I agree it is an anachronism. But it will be interesting to see my fellow Cllrs reaction will be given that they are always keen to implement "the rules" elsewhere. I believe greater emphasis should be put on involving  parishioners moreso in the year round business of the council and helping to shape direction

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"it simply isn't the responsibility of the council." Unfortunately it is a requirement for the PC to convene, organise( including advertise), and fund the annual meeting and also any other parish meeting that may be called by the electorate on meeting the required numbers and notice requirements with no limit to the number of times during the year. An anachronism but still an obligation on the Council. Makes one wonder why some PC's keep it a secret.
Perhaps some councils could do with more unhappy residents using this legal form of holding their errant council to account

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Has “The local authorities and police and crime panels (coronavirus) (flexibility of local authority and police and crime panel meetings) (England and Wales) regulations 2020” which suspended the need for Annual Parish meeting (para14) been formally repealed yet (if that’s the word).

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The Annual Parish Meeting was never included in the Coronavirus Act, only the Annual Parish Council meeting.

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Well I must say my brain is starting to hurt and I think its time we renamed the Annual Parish meeting  to say the Annual electors meeting. Having said that Mrs A an extract from LO1-20 reads "The paragraph 14 changes remove:
• The requirement for the annual parish meeting to assemble on some day
between 1 March and 1 June, both inclusive, in every year
• the requirement in a parish which does not have a separate parish council
for the parish meeting to assemble at least twice a year
• the requirement for parish meeting proceedings to commence no earlier
than 6.00pm

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You may well be correct in the required renaming as many a person including councillors confuse the two separate and different events. A Parish meeting is NOT a meeting of a Parish Council but a meeting of residents of the Parish. Parish councillors who attend do so as residents. Only registered electors have a vote on motions raised on matters  which can include holding the PC to account.
The requirement of involvement of the PC in a Parish meeting  [as defined] with the chair of the council acting as chair of the parish meeting adds further to this confusion which is rather widespread. The Parish meeting affords a community the power to call the PC to account on any matter which in less transparent times might have been impossible.

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Having agreed we are all confused (some more than others) the issue here is must the annual meeting of electors take place with a starting time after 6pm?  In our case the feedback I am getting is that our clerk says no, although I don't as yet know why .