Meetings

Parish Council Meetings are normally held on the first Wednesday of every month (except August) at alternate village halls in Rodington and Longdon-upon-Tern.

The Parish Council occasionally holds extraordinary meetings if necessary. For example, if the council is consulted on a planning application or a highways matter and the Councillors are keen to hear the views of the community before responding.

The agenda for the next meeting of the Parish Council are listed below.

The public and press are welcome to attend all meetings.  Members of the public are invited to address the Council for 15 minutes at the start of each meeting, each member of the public has 3 minutes to present questions or information to the Council.

Here is the meeting schedule:

Information about agendas and minutes

Legal requirements of agendas: 

Parish Councils must publish an agenda for any meetings within 3 clear days ahead of that meeting, this must not include Sundays or Bank Holidays or the date of the notice of the agenda.

The agenda must be wrote and signed by the Clerk, the Clerk shall decide what is on that agenda and may reject requests from Councillors for items to be added, provided sufficient reason is given to the Councillor. If three Councillors write to the Clerk 7 days before the meeting for an item to be on the agenda then the Clerk cannot reject that request unless there is any legal reason why.

Agendas must be clear about what business is to be transacted, they must be followed in order and discussion on items should wait until those items arise, unless the Chairman directs an item to be considered earlier and makes clear that they are doing this and for what reasons. If an item is not on the agenda then it cannot be considered during the meeting, this is because electors and Councillors have the right to have prior knowledge of that item before the meeting so that Councillors can make informed and transparent decisions and electors have the democratic opportunity to prepare any questions.

Legal requirements of minutes: 

Minutes should be wrote in the order that they were discussed during the meeting. Minutes are legally required to be a record of the decisions made, not a verbatim of the discussion, therefore no member of the public can demand that a discussion be minuted, unless the Clerk determines that this discussion has legal implications.

It is best practice for minutes to be published as soon as possible. However, they are only required by law to be viewed from the date of the notice of the next following meeting of that committee. Some minutes shall redact information for commercial or Data Protection purposes.

When can the parish council exclude press and public?

Councils have the legal right, under the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, to exclude the press and public from a meeting if the business to be transacted is considered commercially sensitivity, as bidders or tenders or works have the right to their business information remaining confidential prior to successful appointment.

Other reasons why councils may exclude the press and public are because of potential HR matters, employees have data protection rights over their information being discussed and therefore only the "employers" i.e the Full Council Committee can be present.

And another reason may be relating to any court cases that are ongoing, as the press and public being present may implicate the legal case and the courts may look either more or less favourable to the parish council as a result which is beyond a fair trial in UK case law.

Why don't parish councils have AOB on their agenda?

It is not perceived as good practice to have Any Other Business on a council agenda. That is because councils must make informed decisions, and in order to make an informed decision the item needs to be on an agenda, giving the public the transparent and honest view of what business is to be transacted at the meeting.