How can my small village Parish Council recruit more Councillors?

Question

I am a member of a parish council for a small village (precept of £11k and no general power of competence). The parish council has 7 seats, but 2 are vacant and 1 councillor hardly attends any meetings after an agreed period of absence.

We have been struggling to find people to co-opt as we are close to having issues getting a quorum. We've tried advertising at the village fete, and we are slowly working on getting onto social media, but we are finding hard to find people interested (and public attendance at meetings can be also extremely low). I wonder if anyone had any success finding people to co-opt and/or advice they could share? Thanks.

Answer 1

I was speaking to a council a similar size this week who had encountered very simillar issue last year. They reduced the number of meetings to Bi-Monthly (6 Formal Council Meetings a Year) + Parish Assembly (So 7 Really). This effectively meant had a proper recess. They tried to replicate some of the things I had done locally (all be it on smaller scale given size) to ensure meetings were less onerous in terms of clear papers & changing atmosphere within meetings (formal but with a sense of purpose whilst ensuring before and ensuring people feel welcome and involved). They adopted my approach of been active in community and the matra that I continually push that "meetings are only a very small part of role". These measures whether small or large make the organisation more appealing to join. I do accept it is harder demonstrate to people a small councils can do things that an individual can't (often the hard sell at a larger council is you can take what your currently doing and turbo charge it with proper resources to make it even better)

Comments

I made a similar proposal as the council meets most months of the year, my twist on it to was set up one or two committees to meet to consider more specific issues; the idea being that people could get involved without having to become a 'full' member by co-opting people who want to contribute or work closely with the council on key village assets.

The meetings are already informal and I agree with a village parish council it's very important. We are lucky enough to have a reasonably affable group of councillors but perhaps we don't sell ourselves enough.

Thanks for replying :)

Answer 2

There's nothing quite like a controversial planning application to bring people rushing to your door. Try sending out a survey seeking people's opinions on planning, village amenities etc, including Doomsday scenarios as an option. "The village needs to grow to thrive. What do you consider to be an appropriate number of new dwellings per year? 5/10/20/50?" Suggest the possible loss of a community amenity. I've just circulated a survey on the future of our 750-year-old Parish Church, including an option to bulldoze it and sell the site for housing. There are some lively debates taking place!

Comments

You are right on contentious planning applications, it does bring out people who care about the planning application being discussed, of course, otherwise they disappear into the background. My council has had limited to no success getting local objections listened to as there is a lack of housing in my county as well as the unitary's authorities limited ability to process planning applications.

There are surveys happening reasonably often, the Neighbourhood Plan survey has had good feedback, I was talking about public meeting attendance.

Thanks for your comment.