Money for refreshments

Question

We have a Town Council for a town of over 50,000. The current mayor asked if we can have money for coffee and cake or just refreshments as meetings often go past two hours. The CILCA qualified head advised we can't afford it. It will cut into officer time and we don't have money to pay for it. This is ridiculous. We have less and less Cllr and public involvement. Why can we not have refreshments for ppl! We in the past set aside £50, but the PC advises that our new Back to Basics for our council means we can't afford it.

Answer 1

We used to offer tea/coffee etc. immediately before a meeting but covid pretty much stopped that.  In reality, few offered to help set up or clear away afterwards so the clerk ended up doing it,  sometimes adding as much as an hour to her time at the meeting which in my opinion was a poor use of her time.

Comments

I agree. We used to do that, and it wasn't very often that anyone offered to help the Clerk after the meetings. Everyone just wanted to get home. In the end we stopped doing that and Councillors brought their own cold drink or hot drink in a thermal container.