Can Parish Councils vote on issues without issuing an agenda or holding a meeting?

Question

My local PC has recently decided by e-mail and without consultation with anyone else that the Union Flag will not be flown from the village flagpole on Brexit Day.  Is it within its powers to do this?  The rest of the village might not agree with this decision.

Answer 1

Unless decisions are delegated to committee, they should be made at full council.  That said, this is not a financial decision but a political one and as the parish council should be neutral in its political set up (unlike borough or district councils), it was probably thought that flying a flag on the 31st January as being politically insensitive and concerned about offending an element of the parish.

Also consider the fact that the day is 7 days time and there would be a requirement to hold an extraordinary council meeting that would require 3 days clear notice, leaving it very short of time.

Comments

Thank you for your answer.  The PC had plenty of time to organise an extraordinary meeting but chose not to.  Has it boken any rules/laws please?

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It is not as straightforward as that....
1.  there is no law requiring a parish council to fly a flag - they can chose to fly a flag or not.
2.  has there been a formal request to fly a flag on the 31st January?
3.  if there was, when was it submitted and was it included on an agenda?
4.  if it was on the agenda, what was the council's decision?
4.  If there was no formal request submitted and approved, then the parish council doesn't have to put a flag up.

From your initial message, it would seem to me that someone contacted the parish council informally asking for the flag to be flown and that the clerk emailed the councillors asking for a steer from them and from that, the clerk has opted not to do so.  The Clerk has used their delegated powers as the proper officer which is correct.

The council has not broken any rules if the request to fly the flag was not formally received.

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1. I appreciate that.
2. Yes
3. 13 January 2020. No meeting was called so no agenda.
4. N/A but Councillors voted by e-mail against flying the flag.
5. Understood
Thanks again for your help.  The critical question is as originally posted i.e Can Parish Councils vote on issues without issuing an agenda or holding a public meeting?

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Yes a parish council can make decisions without meeting if delegated authority has been given.  You can't expect the council to meet to agree a stationery order for example.

I would suspect that the formal request has been received after the January full council meeting and that the Chair (who is the one to call extraordinary meetings) did not consider it appropriate to arrange another meeting for a potentially controversial matter.

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Just an aside, there is no requirement for a Parish Council to be non-political, there are many Parishes and Town Councils that are.

As Parish and Town Councillors we set a precept that if residents do not pay, they can be sent to prison, we need, therefore to accept, that we are politicians.