What circumstances can prevent disqualification of a councillor after not attending council meetings for over 6 months?

Question

I am very grateful for the replies received so far.
It is now over 6 months since a particular councillor last attended a parish council meeting in person. They did attend an annual parish meeting within the last 6 months which I understand does not count as a parish council meeting. For most of the meetings they did not attend, they submitted apologies which were accepted by the council by a majority vote. Some councillors did not accept the apologies that were submitted which stated either 'on holiday' or 'other commitment' because it was known that the absent councillor had moved permanenty to France and a 1,000 mile round trip for each council meetings was impractical.
Before the 6-month period of non-attendance was reached, the absent councillor did not submit a written request to the parish council for it to agree for their period of office to be extended. It, therefore, seems to me that this councillor can now be disqualified immediately and without warning. Is this correct?

Answer 1

The answer is in your question. If this councillor submitted an apology giving the reason which is then accepted by the council then the six month "qualifying period" starts again. If it is common knowledge that you say they are now resident abroad then why on earth are the council accepting their reason for non attendance. I don't think " I now live in France" as being an acceptable excuse and it also negates the conditions of being an elected councillor-does it not?

Answer 2

The local government act Section 85  says "attendance as representative of the authority at a meeting of any body of persons, shall be deemed for the purposes of subsection (1) above to be attendance at a meeting of the authority".   One could argue that the Annual Parish meeting comes within that definition.  Countering that,   The act says "he shall, unless the failure was due to some reason approved by the authority before the expiry of that period, cease to be a member of the authority".  Simply accepting an apology for absence does not waive the rule. A resolution would be needed before the 6 month deadline to recognise the absences would trigger section 85, agree that it should be waived and specifically define what "some reason" actually was.  On balance I think the cllr can get away with it for now, but the click starts ticking again the day after the annual parish meeting, & 6 months after that date, he has to go unless the council pass a resolution as defined above.

Answer 3

....and this is the exact reason why my council formally resolved to not accept any apologies for any councillor regardless of their reason.  It means that the clock cannot restart towards the end of the 6-month period for another 6 months and that councillors actually attend and do the job that they signed up for...