Can a Parish Council agree spending on Coronation Celebrations including alcohol for a "toast to the king"?

Question

We had a grant application by a "Coronation Committee" who are looking at various ways to celebrate the Kings Coronation.  Part of the application was the purchase of alcohol - I will say fizzy wine to toast the King.  I would welcome some hardened legislation as to where I as clerk stand as this is apparent "what the village wants".

Answer 1

There is no specific power relating to this, so it falls into the general category of "nothing to say you can't." As you're not directly involved, you can use your power under S137 (assuming you don't have GPoC) to provide funding for this. On this occasion, the applicant has been open with you regarding the purpose of the grant, but you may already have provided funding to others for events that included the provision of alcohol without being aware of that fact.

Comments

Is this not covered by s145 1 e "any purpose incidental to the matters aforesaid, including the provision of refreshments or programmes and the advertising of any entertainment given or dance or exhibition of arts or crafts held by them"
This leads me to an associated question. If say the PC has a power to pay for a certain function does it also mean it can give a grant to a third party to perform the same function?  Whilst S145 clearly allows PCs to contribute other powers are less clear . My logic says that in such cases S137 must then  be used

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The definition of "entertainment" in S145 is unclear and the specific examples included all seem to lean towards a performance of some sort, although they are examples, not an exhaustive list. Is a coronation party an entertainment? It's hard to argue against it.

Answer 2

You can get yourself heavily involved with all manner of laws, rules, paragraphs, sub sections, legislation and so on but the real bottom line here is that the Parish Council can do pretty much what it wants to do if the Councillors approve it and it falls within the bounds of general law. So providing they are not intending to hold an illegal rave and dance naked on the rooftops then a small affair such as you describe would not raise any eyebrows.