co-opting council member, was this specific method legal?

Question

I have just attended a meeting where i was intending to call for a vote of no confidence due to general rule breaking(to some extent i now have evidence), however it didn't happen as district and county councillors weren't able to make.
However another concern has now been brought to my attention, a former clerk has now applied to be a councillor, basically what happened was, the chairman almost forgot about procedure and was about to ask the candidate to join the table, but was reminded they need a proposal and a seconder, which the councillor conveniently got, but the rest of the councillors were not asked to raise their hand to vote on the matter, is this legal? I am currently in discussion with someone from democratic services regarding the last issue i asked about on here so with there help we are hopefully going to see some improvements.

Answer 1

A vote of no confidence in who/what? Whilst you may do so, please be aware that it has no legal status and rarely changes anything.

If you feel that any matter during a meeting is not being conducted correctly, you should raise a point of order at that moment, in accordance with your standing orders. If the other members did not wish to support the nomination, presumably they would have said so at the time. In which case, the very best you can hope for by raising an objection after the close of the meeting is that the item will be added to the next agenda for ratification, so all you're doing is delaying the appointment by a few weeks.

Comments

If there wasn’t a valid vote to co-opt, the cooption would not be valid and the candidate would not be a Cllr

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Thanks for the replies, so to be honest the vote of no confidence was more of something i was considering due to a long list of broken rules including the fact only friends of the council can ask questions, a number of the community have consistently been interrupted by certain members of the council despite the fact there was nothing wrong with their questions, me included..I just find it all concerning including the register of interest where it is a criminal offence that they haven't even updated it, and yet no one does anything about it. As a community we have not had our minutes published in months meaning no one actually knows if their questions are been recorded. I don't personally want to have to resort to such actions, but i'm just finding one thing after another that doesn't seem right. Tonight we had a consultancy regarding speeding so we had an extra hour to raise concerns on that subject specifically, and it was brought to my attention that a resident had claimed(prior to the meeting) that they never got a flyer(which is possible because of the layout of the house) The clerk claimed in an open meeting tonight that every house got a flyer, but i tried to bring up that residents were claiming that they didn't get one and even said a specifc street just in case they had made a mistake(because of the layout of the houses in that street it is possible to miss ones out by mistake) And the clerk literally shut me down. Regardless of whether it's legal or not, i don't find it to be moral, as for the voting of the councillor, yes they could have stated whether they had an objection, but that wasn't how they did it the past 2 times which is why i was concerned, to me it looked like the chairman was prepared to even skip the proposal and seconder because she was going to invite the candidate to the table before that even happened as those words came out of her mouth.

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It’s not for the clerk to shut anybody down at a council meeting.  The clerk has no speaking part unless invited to make a discreet contribution by the chair.
Sounds like you have a puppet chair.

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So in context the LHI part of the meeting was chaired by the clerk the rest of the meeting was chaired by the chair simply because he knew more about the LHI, but i agree that he shouldn't have shut me down in the way that he did, the actual chair i find i struggle to hear because she is so soft spoken which is rather unfortunate. But it just seems so strange that simple question clarifying whether all houses got these leaflets was rudely shut down

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I have read all this, particularly the last comment "The LHI part of the meeting was chaired by the Clerk".

If your clerk and councillors (including you) do not understand that clerk should NEVER chair any meeting then I'm afraid your organisation is in deep trouble.

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Yes, i do agree, i mean i'm not a councillor myself (though my father was) but i'm just generally finding one rule after another seems to be disregarded, and basically no one seems to be allowed to address this hence i've ended up doing FOI's and coming on here generally so i can try and learn about some of the things that don't add up, i have also taken the time to read the model code of conduct, and was a committee member of a charity(which is different to some extent). I've reported the issue regarding register of interest and someone got back to me indicating they would personally do what they can to get it updated, but it looks like every member has failed to disclose information including a former clerk..the only reason i know some of the information is because some of it is public knowledge for example one of them is listed as a director and hasn't disclosed.
Literally the only thing i can do, is see if i can get enough electors to call for an extraordinary meeting, i suspect i would need district councillor to be available though.

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Here's a couple of learning points - 1. Clerks are not required to complete a register of interests - only councillors do that. 2.  You do not have the legal right to call an extra-ordinary meeting of the parish council.

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Thanks, yes i am aware councillors should do that, it indicated that on the register of interest section. Ah, ok, i was clearly misinformed in that case, i was under the impression that should i have enough electors that we could call a meeting like the annual meeting where it was open to discussion..not specifically council meeting? What i was meaning really is a meeting specifically to give people an open but fair opportunity to give feedback on any issue, so long as it was managed correctly, it seems odd that only the friends of the council get a fair opportunity to raise a question, and that they even get to have a proper discussion were as those of us that don't fit into their circle might not always have our question heard, even if we are keeping within the rules. I'm sure councils shouldn't be operated like that, certainly if i was a councillor i would rather hear all questions fairly within the time slot that is available. When i was committee member(not connected to the council) of a charity it was always expected that we heard people fairly, though i didn't have the issues that the council seems to have. I suppose for now it's probably just better to watch and learn, it doesn't sound like there is a lot else that can be done unless new councillors were appointed.

Answer 2

We would need to see what your council standing orders and/or cooption procedure say but the fact remains that your chair is not empowered to unilaterally select and present cooption candidates.

Comments

I'm not too sure on their procedure as i haven't been able to find anything, conveinently the website that normally holds all their documents is currently not working, and when it has been working in the past is rarely updated on time, the chair seems to be forgetful as she often seems to forget procedure, December last year she tried to approve her own expenses, to be told by one of the councillors who was a former clerk that she couldn't do that, she has been a councillor since 2015 i believe so she should be aware of the rules by now, though some things may have changed since then. I have sent off e-mails to the district councillor and county councillor simply to keep them aware of what has been going on. I am aware they are unlikely to be able to help, but at least if they are kept aware if a new councillor has any issues and addresses them themselves then they probably would have better opportunity of having it addressed.

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You are not alone in having bad apples on the council and I don't know what the answer is?

After the May elections, there were 3 vacancies but they were not advertised on the Council's website or the notice board, they were put into the village magazine & a facebook page. Chair elect turns up with two former councillors and proceeds to co-opt, Clerk made up a cock & ball story about first elections not following Co Option policy (which incidentally is abysmal).
One of those former (now sitting on the Council a second time) councillors met the criteria but  almost immediately moved 20 miles  away and yet still continues to inflict her strong values. Said Councillor publically advocated in a Parish Council meeting that she was always told to destroy emails so there would be no audit trails.

Chair spent £35k on a pond restoration which has increased flooding because the drains were cleared out whilst the pond leaks c2,000L of water per day.

Council was about to put up 20mph signs until I pointed this was unlawful unless they made Planning & Highways aware.

Our Council is frequently unlawful, frequently bullying,  there is no attempt to follow the Nolan Principles and meetings are more like the Freemasons than Parish Council.

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Are you a member of, or are served by the same Council as Imagee?

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Thank you for your comment JP2000, it's sad to see other councils are doing this, but at least if we are aware of what issues go on, i'm sure with enough voices someone could do something about the injustice in the system(so along as it's done so within the law) Because the council seldom treat us equally some of my concerns are now on FOI for the whole world to see, meaning despite i don't wish to be on the internet myself for random people to see, i now no longer have a choice in the matter because i have chosen to stand up to them via an FOI..simply because the clerk took me out of context in my email, my reasoning was if it was on a public page i can't be taken out of context.
However it means i have now been issued with the ruling of vextatious(probably my fault to some extent on reflection but unless you knew the background of what has been going on it would be easy to take their side on that).
Ironically one of the former councillors was also a freemason(a trustee) and didn't disclose on the register of interest and he was also a former clerk. The only thing i can think of(which would probably put me out of pocket) would be to write a letter to every house in the village and deliver it myself asking for people to give feedback. I wonder if the reason we don't see enough change is perhaps because people feel they aren't actually being listened to in the first place.
If the council is doing something which is illegal there needs to be another option rather than speaking to the parish council, you wouldn't ask a department in the police to investigate their own department if an officer broke the law, so the question really is why is the parish council allowed to do this whilst they are the ones breaking the law. I personally feel there needs to be a failsafe for any organisation to prevent them from getting too much power.
Not that i am in favour of such actions but you can understand why some people act like Robin Hood and Guy Fawkes if they know the council behaves in such manner, but it is important to do what we can within the context of the law otherwise we would be no better than them. As the saying goes "Evil Prevails when good men do nothing". I might not be able to do a lot, but there is no way i will sit back and not acknowledge what is going on and try to do something.

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You should E mail the clerk and ask for a copy of the co option procedures and your Council's publication scheme, which is meant to indicate where anyone can find any kind of publication by your council.  If it doesn't have one, tell them to publish one or you will have to report them to the Information Commissioner & the External Auditor.

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Graeme_r hard to tell as we don't seem to all be using our full names, me included, but i don't think we are, I come under Huntingdonshire District(one of the parishes in that section) You can see on their website quite a number of parishes including our own haven't kept to the register of interest rule, sorry i'm not sure if we are allowed to disclose location publicly as i don't know what the rules are regarding that with it being a public site- re your suggestion the clerk doesn't listen to me, often shuts me down, but i will ask one of the councillors

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If you are not a Councillor (or even if you are)  then I suggest contacting the Information Commissioner Office with a complaint about the Council failing to make its publication scheme available. The ICO can take action against the Council as failing to make it available is a breach of the Freedom of Information Act.

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It probably has been in the past, however many documents that would have been available on the website have not been available since September as some of the site has conveniently been down and seems to take more than one month for them to fix it, they do however have a facebook page so i find it strange that they don't publish minutes, i will however make a point of speaking to Information Commissioner office, has taken me a while to find where to make a report though as i find that site confusing but i think i've found it anyway, i have certainly got somewhere so we will see how that goes.