Parish/town council annual reports

Question

Do most councils produce an annual report in addition to statutory accounts, audit report and governance? Even if not required by law, is it good practice to produce and annual report and provide an annual report in either the annual parish meeting or the annual town meeting (AGM)?

Answer 1

We include presentations of last year's achievements and next year's plans at our annual parish meeting. Usually Chair and Vice Chair deliver them. We publish detailed accounts on our website alongside the AGAR. A couple of my parishes also publish a simple printed annual report delivered to every household.

Comments

Thank you this is helpful, Dave. I think the way you cover last year and next year is a good approach. What is the reason that you do not publish last year's achievements as a short annual report on your website? I am genuinely very interested to know how many PCs and TCs do this. Thanks again

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We like to hold something back as a carrot to entice people to come to our Annual Parish Meetings. In earlier years they were a complete waste of time, with one man and his dog turning up if we were lucky. It reached the point where we were holding the APM immediately before another PC meeting and allowing only 10 minutes between the start times of the two agendas. We now invite guest speakers to the APM, deliver our own reports and invite every village club, group, and organisation to deliver a soapbox presentation of up to 5 minutes about their work. Throw in free tea, coffee and biscuits and we get up to 50 residents attending, if it doesn't clash with football on the telly! After the event, we add the annual report to the website for everybody to see. We also have the advantage of free newsletters/magazines to every household in the parish, so we drip-feed news stories out throughout the year in this way.

Sadly, very few local councils engage with their electorate in this way.