What are the consequences of a parish not having a Parish Council, and not holding Parish Meetings.

Question

My Parish does not have a Parish council nor a functioning Parish Meeting. Noone wants to be elected as Chair and we no longer have a Clerk. If we do not hold Meeting to agree budgets, precepts etc, does the District Council step in to manage these things?

Answer 1

Need a bit of clarification please.  Are you a parish council (with the power to raise a precept) or a parish meeting?

Comments

We are a Parish Meeting.

Answer 2

Section 91 of the LGA 1972 states:-

"Where there are so many vacancies in the office of parish or community councillor that the parish or community council are unable to act, the district council [or Welsh principal council] may by order appoint persons to fill all or any of the vacancies until other councillors are elected and take up office."

In the absence of any other reference, I presume this arrangement might apply to parish meetings, although the legislation gives the district council a power, not a duty, to intervene, so in the case of a parish meeting, they might decide not to. Without a functioning parish meeting, no expenditure is permitted and no precept can be set for future years.

Comments

Many thanks, your answer is very helpful.

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Not sure this applies to a parish meeting.

Answer 3

A district council has the power to anticipate a precept if the precept demand isn't made when they were expecting one but I'm not sure they would want use this power for a parish meeting that wasn't functioning.