Question

If there is a place on the parish council, and there is only one candidate, does it still go to a vote?

Answer 1

Check the standing orders you have which should have guidance. As it is a decision of the council to co-opt then there should be a vote. In the interest of future relations within the council it would be advisable to hold a written anonymous vote so there is no basis for personal grudges.

Answer 2

You have to have a vote because the candidate - however many there are - can only be co-opted by a majority of the PC.
In theory (actually in practice as these pages have previously exampled) you ‘could’ have  only 1 candidate but they do not achieve a majority vote.
Hence, yes, a vote is required to co-opt regardless of the number of candidates

Answer 3

This is an interesting question as guidance has changed recently.  The Local Government Act does state that a council must vote to accept a candidate for co-option and that the successful candidate must achieve a simple majority.  So, if there's one candidate who does not receive a simple majority, I would argue that the individual has not been successfully co-opted.  However, a recent court case (and therefore currently the advice of NALC) is that if there is only one candidate and there is a requirement for councils to co-opt as soon as practicable when a vacancy occurs and there is no request for an election, that candidate must be co-opted.  This of course makes a complete nonsense of the need for the vote.
The current favoured option to avoid this is to have an agreed co-option policy which sets out clearly the need for a vote and can incorporate a ballot (paper) vote although that again goes against current guidelines which say (as the standing orders do) that any vote should be by a show of hands, i.e  an open vote.  Whether this will or can be challenged, remains to be seen.

Comments

Hi DBW, would you be willing to share the details of the court case to any extent.

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Again, this is nonsense and indicative of a lack of ability to interpret simple process.
Any candidate for co-option must be co-opted by a majority vote of the existing PC. It matters not if there are 10 candidates for 1 Cllr vacancy or 10 vacancies and 1 candidate. If they don’t get a majority vote they ain’t co-opted.
No Cllr can be ‘forced’ to vote or to vote a certain way.
If there is only 1 candidate and they do NOT receive a majority vote they are not co-opted.
Guidance has NOT recently changed and there is not a recent a court case which provides a precedent. If there were it would be referenced- it isn’t.

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I have to say I'm intrigued by your response Delboy'swife. Surely the whole reason co-option is lawful is that the democratically elected councillors need to vote for them i.e. the people have trusted the elected councillors to make decisions for the council and in turn, that privilege is passed on to the co-opted councillors who will no doubt select others during their time, and so on.

If councils have to take anyone who applies with no chance of removing that person until the next election, you could end up with all kinds of self-serving narcissistic odd-jobs on board. I mean, yes, that can happen now anyway and we can probably all name someone like that on our councils, but at least most have some sort of belief that they are "doing the right thing". With this rule, you can have someone knowingly do the wrong thing intentionally (such as a vexatious resident) to screw things over. I mean, we're all aware the only things stopping us from doing lots of bad things are 1) our good consciences and 2) our personal standing/credibility. Most of the time, there are no repercussions for acting unlawfully.

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Intrigued…..
Is that a euphemism for I can see it’s nonsense?

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Actually, councillors are being forced to vote a certain way. It is not acceptable to turn down any candidate for whom a vacancy exists, as long as they are not disqualified. So by allowing councillors to be selective, they would be failing to fulfil the requirement to have a full council as soon as practicable. There is no provision to exclude " less desirable" candidates.   Recent legal advice was that a vote must be held, as that is how councils resolve an action. However, there is only one acceptable way to vote, and that is to co-opt, to do otherwise would be to risk judicial review.
Personally I am extremely uncomfortable with the notion that any one can instruct anyone else how to vote. Much safer to consider ammending standing orders to reflect that when there are more vacancies than candidates, co option does not require a vote.
I recently was co opted to one of 3 vacancies after a humiliating 25 minute discussion that risked every participant's adhesion to the Nolan principals.
( I had been a vocal critic of a previous councillors activities that led to the council acting unlawfully, libelous communications were made in an attempt to keep me out. I was not disqualified, So a person with skills and good intentions could be kept out by people wanting to maintain a status quo).