Question

Can a parish council hold social events eg cake sale, cheese and wine to raise money for the PC?

Answer 1

It depends what the money is being raised for? If its to help purchase playground equipment that's fine. If it's raising money for future events ie all profits will be used to fund the next event, again fine.

If its being used to fund holidays for the councillors, then not fine.

Comments

Thanks for the clarification. I thought a PC couldn’t act as a fundraising entity tbh. Obviously I meant for parish purchases and not for holidays for Councillors but I thought I’d seen a statute that meant they couldn’t raise money in such a way. I must be wrong so many thanks

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It can't act as a trading company, it has to create a CIC to do that but if its organising an event, that event could generate income which could be used to purchase something...

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They can't raise money to go to the church. Maybe this was what you saw.

The Localism Act requires a council to create a company if they are doing things for 'Commercial Purpose' under the General Power of Competence. Maybe this is what you saw. Not sure whether running social events would be classed as commercial purpose or not,

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“… They can't raise money to go to the church...”

Which church?

Whichever “church” you mean, this NALC promoted OPINION is untested and open to different interpretations.
If a PC can raise funds, and there are circumstances where it legitimately can, there is not an automatic and all encompassing barrier to transferring PC funds to a religious entity.
It is all in the details - and (just maybe) those details may become a little less contradictory with the Lords amendment to the draft levelling up bill which is anticipated to include (in part) a revocation of the 18whatever act which is still commonly misquoted as the barrier to PC funds being made available to religious entities.
(I don’t a have a horse in this race BTW - just don’t like seeing corporate opinion being parroted as legal doctrine (not suggesting AR is doing that just more generally…)

Answer 2

Thankfully there are no suggestions of raising money for a church of any kind but raising money to purchase new parish assets and refurbishing others. Thanks for all the answers and it seems the fundraising for such items can go ahead freely.