Does purdah mean that an annual event can no longer take place

Question

My town council organises an annual Easter egg hunt. Many of the volunteers who help out on this activity are town councillors. Our events working group has decided to cancel the Easter egg hunt this year because it falls during the purdah pre-election period.

I think this is an overly-cautious approach to purdah. I don't think it makes common sense that annual activities would have to potentially be cancelled every four years because of elections. I don't think any reasonable person would see an Easter egg hunt as being electioneering.

Am I right? Or is the cancellation of the event the right approach?

Answer 1

The rule for the pre-election period is business as usual.
If the elections are actually for the town councillors (an not borough / district / county elections), then they would need to consider the risk of self promotion if any photos or news articles are written about the event.  But if this is an annual event, then there is no reason for it not to continue to take place.

Answer 2

If the council usually does an Easter egg hunt they should continue to do an Easter egg hunt. If councillors usually help then councillors should continue to help. If councillors want to advertise their involvement with it themselves they can do that, the council should not. Publicity should not reference councillors, statements for publicity should come from officers not councillors.

If you want examples of how high the bar is set, a town council near me gave out Easter eggs to school children with a picture of a town councillor who was standing in a local authority by-election for the same area on the eggs and the police said that it wasn't a breach. A couple of years ago, in my ward the local authority delivered a letter from the sitting councillors with their political party mentioned after their names saying that they were going to consult on traffic calming later in the year during all out local elections and that was deemed not to be a breach. Purdah is barely worth the paper it's written on.