Is there such a thing as a CEO/manager of a parish

Question

Hi
Our Parish Clerk is saying in an email to a Fellow member of the council that “ she’s the CEO and Manager of the parish and demands respect form the councillors,” all this came about because some of the counsellors want to receive the minutes agenda of meetings etc in paper form not by email.  This question was ask at a meeting some months ago, would we like to receive future minutes agenda and paperwork by email, some of us said no and did not opt in to having them sent by email. We’ve all started receiving  everything by email, when one councillor sent an email to the clerk requesting a paper form be sent through the post to them, they got a reply from the clerk basically saying ”She doesn’t see the need to send out paper form when you can receive everything by email” and then goes on to say “that she is the CEO and manager of the Parish and therefore demand respect from the councillors”  is there such a thing in any legal Legislation LGA 1972 etc, to say a clerk can be classed as CEO / Manager of a Parish when she is an employee of the parish council, position held being parish clerk and proper officer.

Answer 1

More and more Parish Councils are moving in this direction as power drifts from the elected Councillors to the staff and or a small number of Councillors
It’s quite straight forward Councillors make decisions like this not the Clerk

Matters like the should be dealt with in the form of a motion which Councillors can vote on, the Clerk then implements the decision
In my experience the majority of Parish Councillors think they are volunteers  and don’t understand they are elected public officials with all the responsibilities that entails

Answer 2

Sadly some of the local associations loosely refer to the Clerk being the CEO, however, this is overly simplistic. We need to remember how a council is formed and the nature of its operations, which is not a company! A Council's structure is more closely aligned to a charity in its governance than it is a company.

The Clerk is a responsible officer (usually) with legal responsibilities and therefore should guide the council on what is and is not legal. The Chairman is someone who controls a meeting to make sure it is in order, the power pretty much ends there. So by default, if one was to be technical then the Clerk is the one who has a role most closely associated with that of a CEO in a company. But remember a council is not like a company.

A charity can have a day to day responsible person such as a Director-General or similar BUT they themselves are governed by a board of trustees which has a chairman, it is the board of Trustee's who set the strategic focus of the charity, which is where you can see the better similarities of Council and Charity than Council and Company.

Hope this helps.

Comments

A clerk is a clerk (Proper Officer) at the end of the day, no matter how you dress it up, you can call in what you like, the clerk is still employed by the parish council, they aren’t the parish council or the person in charge, what would be the point of the parish council, who are there to represent the people of a Parish, (not themselves) the councillors has a discussion about a matter then have a vote, therefore a decision is made.
The clerk or the chairman (Vice chairmen) doesn’t have the authority to override / overturn a decision, therefore cant make decisions of their own on behalf of the council, am I right or wrong?

A councillor has the right to decide if they want to receive agenda and minutes in paper form or email, (LGA 1972 etc by opting in or opting out) and their decision should be respected by all including the clerk, not to be told by the clerk you will receive everything by email regardless.

A parish council isn’t a trust, company or anything else, it’s just a parish  council. Director’s, CEO’s, Manager’s etc are for companies.

Sorry if all this sounds quite harsh, I’m a simple straight forward person and like straight forward answers, no going around the house’s.

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I was trying to simply the point in my response to your question to better highlight why a Clerk is NOT a CEO