Can a Cllr be reimbursed by the council when s/he has purchased an item.

Question

The councils financial regs do not allow for Cllrs to purchase items on behalf of the parish council. The expenditure was authorised in a parish council meeting. The Cllr is new and went ahead and purchased it online rather than wait for the much slower parish council purchase process. How can I ensure that reimbursement of the Cllr is proper practice?

Answer 1

Depending what the expenditure was then you could potentially put it through as a s.137 so long as there was a benefit back to the community. This isn’t something which should be common place though.
Other than that you could put it through as a Councillor expense but again it’s got to be properly justified.

Failing that the Cllr will have to sadly accept the mistake and that there’s no way of assisting.

Answer 2

Assuming there is a receipt available, which there should be for an online purchase, this is no different from any other supplier transaction. When you say that your finance regs do not allow this, do you mean they don't include provision for it, or do they expressly forbid it? If the former, I'd just pay it on the basis that they don't say you can't do it. I allow members of my councils to make purchases and reclaim the cost where there is a valid reason to do so.

Comments

Please come and be our Clerk, you speak so much sense and clearly have a very functionning bulls**t filter!!!

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Thank you for your kind offer Chloe. I'm a little busy at the moment, but I'll bear it in mind!!