Straw poll - how many hours do your clerks spend acting as a Clerk compared to acting as an RFO?

Question

I would suggest we're a small parish council - 1000 households, precept of around £110k (with about 50% being used to pay off a PWLB loan). The clerk was on 20hrs a week and has resigned. The Parish Council is struggling to find a replacement. The clerk - who isn't CiLCA qualified - doesn't want to do public meetings any more, but is offering to stay on purely as a locum RFO on half the hours, but double the pay - so essentially their current take home pay.

Given 10hrs a week and 4.5 weeks in a month, 45 hours per month seems rather a lot given that some months, the only bills to be processed are the clerks own wage and the utility bills for the Parish Office they don't intend to use any more. I'm yet to total up the average across a year, but I reckon it'll work out around 6 bills to process a month (which will include those presumably on direct debit). Appreciate at certain times of the year, the RFO role is far more involved than just bill paying - quarterly reconciliations, annual budget, year end finances etc.

Just wondering if anyone can give any insight as to what they or their clerk/RFO spends wearing each hat because this just sounds like a big con against some very gullible councillors to me, but I would like to be proven wrong.

Answer 1

We've never asked our clerk to separate out the tasks but I think the role is so much more than simply paying a few bills.  If you start with your financial regulations as a guide, a town or parish council spends public funds on its activities so the role needs to ensure that those funds are used responsibly, in accordance with the law and provide value for money for residents.  The role of the RFO is to monitor and manage that process so should be ensuring your financial regulations are adhered to which might include providing advice and guidance on whether a project or activity is accordance with regulations/legislation, ensuring expenditure has been agreed by council, is within budget, that any financial risks have been identified, mitigated and insurances are in place, proper financial records are kept, both contractors and staff are paid at the right level and in accordance with procedures, invoices are checked, there is a proper investment strategy which is followed ..... I could go on.

You mention that your clerk isn't qualified and if I was considering a separate RFO role, I'd expect that individual to be qualified too (CiLCA as a minimum, to reflect the importance of the financial management of the council and there is also a financial qualification FiLCA too) and I'd certainly question a salary level of twice the clerk's role!

Comments

Hey Delboy'swife - thanks for the comment. Yeah, I appreciate that there is a lot more involved with the job and actually, there's a lot of "crossed lines" between the two roles. If the roles were traditionally split at a council, you'd expect the job specification to detail what tasks were to be done by each person carrying out the two positions. That's not the case here, so I think it would be very easy for this person to say "I'm just here as the RFO and that's something a clerk needs to do!" if they didn't want to do a particular task.

Unfortunately, this clerk isn't particularly good at following the financial regulations. For example, they don't do any of the work to do with getting quotes. This has led to the existing contractor for grass-cutting/grounds maintenance simply being re-engaged on their renewal offer (£12k) without seeking quotes from anywhere else. It lead to "a member of a working group" being used to provide paid services to the council... and it turning out that this person previously having their company wound up for failing to pay tax. I put "a member of a working group" in quotes because although they and the councillors believed them to be a member of the working group at the time of engagement, technically the working group wasn't properly established... so who knows what's going on with that one! Oh and all this happened in just one meeting back in February!
The budget was done by one of the councillors. The wrong increase on the precept was voted on/announced as a result because they didn't calculate it correctly, which caused confusion when the council tax bills came out. There was no financial risk assessment done in preparation for the budget, so around £12k is known to be coming out of the reserves to zero-balance this year's expected spending, despite the auditor having previously stating in last year's AGAR that the reserves need to be increased to meet the recommended levels.

And this is just what I know has been going on from attending meetings and reading the few documents that ever get put on the council's website. Goodness knows what is going on behind the scenes. To be blunt, I would have more faith in the so-called African prince that emailed me earlier today and asking me to smuggling millions of dollars out of his country to do a more thorough job!

Despite all this, I'm still trying to find something statistical that says there are far too many hours being offered for the work to avoid having to publicly point out the wrong-doings, although I'm compiling a list of all this stuff and more for the auditor to look at.

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Well, it sounds as if the fact that the clerk has resigned is an opportunity to get things back on the right footing then.  For the record, we are a town council but with double your households and slightly more than your precept.  We have a clerk who works 30 hours a week and an admin assistant who mainly looks after the burial ground who works 16 hours a week.  It seems to work although both seem to manage to fill their hours.  Done properly, there's much to do in the strange world we occupy to be honest.  I'd suggest your new clerk needs to get his or her teeth into a few issues which will need some time to sort.   I'd certainly recommend a qualified person.

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Thanks Delboy'swife - appreciate the feedback and the time taken to send it!

Answer 2

Er ... please let me know when you advertise this - half the work for twice the pay sounds like my sort of job!!!

Comments

Well, this is another quirky little thing about this matter John1706 - the job of replacement Clerk/RFO is being advertised, but this interim RFO-only position is not being advertised anywhere unfortunately. It's purely the suggestion of the resigning clerk who is for some reason able to put aside their reasons for resigning. Clearly it wasn't because they had another job to go to or because they had an issue with the work...

Answer 3

You aren't going to be proven wrong with this one.

You could have a councillor as an 'acting' RFO while you recruit another clerk, it's not a viable long term solution but I think it would be preferable to being done by this person.

What has your PC been doing to find a replacement?

Comments

Hey EHR - thanks for your response. Currently the Clerk/RFO role is combined, although I'm aware that a councillor could act unpaid in the interim if required for either role if they needed to be separated. The PC has advertised with the local county ALC who stuck an advert up on their website. The village is right on the county border though. I've suggested they use the SLCC instead - but even the lack of responses to the CALC advert hasn't prompted them to change tack - they've simply extended the deadline and reduced the requirement for a replacement Clerk/RFO to be "working towards CiLCA" instead of requiring it.

Answer 4

These suggested “arrangements” unfortunately seem increasingly common. It seems to start when someone dares ask difficult questions in a public meeting (as in actual basic scrutiny). Guided by certain “circles” within sector they will have already tried the usual tried and tested vexatious policy, limit public participation, reduce transparency and then seem to move to the trump card “I will leave" (but then never actually leave completely). Seems quite a few recently returned as "consultants", "RFOs" & "Project Managers / Committee Officers" (usually Neighbourhood Plans that are never ending). Its interesting since council meetings started to be recorded more freequently (post weaver) how many inept clerks suddenly want to back office version of the role...

Comments

Or perhaps the lack of understanding of the role by those "employers", bullying and intimidation with no effective protection, unlike any other employment role, poor pay and unrealistic workloads is driving clerks out.
There are always two sides to every situation.

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True I have seen both sides. Some fabulous Clerks & Cllrs left sector or halfway out the door. The whole thing will implode based on current trajectory.

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Progress - It's funny you should say that. March's meeting was cancelled after a "hot topic" caught the attention of the general public. The external auditor even showed interest in what was going on. But the line from the Parish Council was that the clerk had covid and a "no clerk, no meeting" rule was announced in the local parish magazine after consultation with the county ALC. April's scheduled meeting is not going ahead, but instead there's an extraordinary one happening two days prior to what should have been the scheduled April meeting. Only it's happening at 4:30pm instead of the usual 7pm. It's also void of any public speaking session where the meetings since last May's election have had two per meeting.
Also, all the items other than apologies and declarations of interest are being held behind closed doors. There are only three other items on the agenda for this extraordinary meeting, none of which appeared on the cancelled March meeting agenda (including the signing off of February's minutes). One of these items is the offer from the current clerk to stay on as RFO. Interestingly, they seem to think it appropriate to discuss this item with the clerk present while the public are excluded - or they're willing to break their "no clerk, no meeting" rule (which I know is not the legal case at all).

Emails are not being answered, the phone is never picked up and now they're trying to have clandestine meetings. It's all going on a big ol' list to be given to the External Auditor to look at in the summer.