If there were enough candidates, could all vacant seats be filled via a by election triggered by one resignation?

Question

I have written to our County Council's Electoral Services dept with this query:

"Could you  confirm  that if an election is called it would be for all vacancies in all 3 wards of a Parish Council, and that if there are vacancies on all three wards (as there are currently), is a separate petition required for each ward?"
 

And received this response:

"Should a vacancy arise as you have indicated then a Notice of Vacancy will be produced for that vacancy only and any resulting petition to call an election will only be for that one vacancy.  The current vacancies remain with the Parish to deal with under their co-option procedures."

Our PC has 5 vacant seats. One councillor has missed 6 meetings thereby triggering the process for a by election. I thought that it would be preferable and more efficient financially to democratically to fill the other vacant seats via the same election, if more than one candidate stood for the seat recently vacated, rather than co-option? (The PC has not co-opted certain residents in the past without any good reason). 

Apologies for cross posting, I've also asked this question in a comment to an earlier question) 

Answer 1

Has there been the 10 electors requesting a by election then as your question is unclear...  Just because a councillor has fallen foul off the 6 month meeting rule, this doesn't mean that it is an automatic formal by election.  It would just mean that the position is advertised with the standard notice calling on 10 electors to request a by election if they wanted.

It would just seem to me that your parish council now has 6 vacancies that it has to try and fill....

Comments

My question is simply this: If a by election is called (because 10 electors request a by election when a councillor resigns/a seat becomes vacant) are the voters only voting for one position, even if there are 5 seats to be filled?
Example: there are 12 available seats. Only 7 people stood at the last election, therefore  5 seats are vacant. One of these councillors resigns. 10 electors request a by election. 5 people stand for election. Will all 5 be elected, or only one?

Answer 2

If 2 of the vacancies have had their petition period expire (14 days of the vacancy occurring), they cannot be put back up for election. They must be co-opted, the council is also required to co-opt councillors that they see fit - but -  they cannot just ignore the vacancies and not consider candidates those putting themselves forward. It is the council's responsibility to try to have a full council.

The new vacancy can be filled via petition / nomination / election. But the existing ones must be co-opted.