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The Parish Council’s website has been developed by voluntary effort of a councillor to satisfy the requirements of the Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities.
The  village’s Neighbourhood Plan steering group (independent of the PC) will receive funding to cover publishing the NP online and would like to use the PC website as it has all the functionality they need. They wish to share web hosting and SSL Certificate and domain name costs with the PC.  Can the PC councillor receive payment for any extra work done to enhance the PC website and / or time spent helping the NP Steering Committee?
by (120 points)

2 Answers

0 votes
I think the basis for your answer is in the opening statement." developed by a voluntary effort". Your talented councillor is apparently not receiving payment for their ongoing management of the web site at the moment. It would need to be ascertained whether the person involved was happy to expand their workload as required still on a voluntary basis.  Any incidental costs, (ongoing domain and hosting costs) already being met by the council? If so then it would be a decision made by council as to what costs incurred  could should or would be passed onto the NDP Group. As is usual, the NDP would be produced under the stewardship of the PC anyway and they would need to consider their obligation to supporting ( and funding) community projects such as this. So it is best to keep the website work as a voluntary basis as this avoids any complications of conflicts of interest etc. with a clear and transparent decision making process as to content so that the site is always under control of the PC and not one person ( or company)

Unfortunately having a talented councillor doing it in itself is not a problem but implications of this route need to be considered ( i.e retirement of councillor, illness, etc etc. ) and contingencies put in place.
by (28.3k points)
0 votes
A councillor cannot be a paid employee of the council, but in theory could receive an allowance to cover his/her work. Town and Parish Councillors rarely receive them, but there is nothing in statute to prevent it. A bit curious to say the site needs enhancing via though to meet the transparency code. Is the clerk unable to manage the content?
by (35.7k points)

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