New Parish Council Leadership

This year has seen the resignation of two councillors:

• Cllr Selway (13 June Min 323.23.12) and Cllr Baines (21 Aug 19 noted Sept pre-meeting note)  and a
• Clerk, Marian (13 June Min 323.23.13 working until 31 Aug19 Min 325.25 & then as joint/Interim Clerk in Sept19 Min 326.6), and saw
• North Somerset declare a councillor in breach of Bleadon Council’s Code of Conduct with regards to Openness and Leadership.

 This month sees a new agenda and meeting style under the leadership of the new Chair, Cllr Williams, and new, qualified and experienced Clerk, Naomi.

It will be interesting to see how the Openness, Leadership and Transparency of councillors’ decision making and expenditure progresses over the coming months.

-----

BACKGROUND

In February this year North Somerset Council stated that a Bleadon Parish Councillor had acted in breach of its Code of Conduct, particularly with regards to Openness and Leadership. Despite this finding Bleadon Parish Council (BPC) is yet to openly acknowledge and/or discuss this outcome in a public meeting, over six months later?

Since this breach was recognised two councillors and a clerk have resigned. This week BPC published its September minutes, there was no discussion and/or explanation as to why the previous Chairman resigned (Sept Mins), no letter of resignation noted, nor any thanks for his service over the last 14 months?

Cllr Williams was elected as the new Chairman. She is also Chair of BPC’s Neighbourhood Development Plan and Play Park Projects, BPC representative on the Youth Club, member of the Parochial Church Council and its representative on the Halls Committee.

Her first proposal and expenditure as Chair of BPC was to allocate £1,200 to widen the entrance to the halls car park “by one dropped kerb” (Min 326.19) or to 'shunt' it to one side, stating 'I raised it because it was my car that was bumping over the edge'. NB Last year this proposal was rejected by councillors at both Full Council (Min 315.18) and the F&P sub-Committee (Min 54.6) stating “… the majority of drivers had no problem accessing the car park and responsibility for sensible driving lay with the driver”, so what has changed this time? Is this really a good use of public money?

BPC also has a new qualified and experienced Clerk (BVN 113) who has already started to improve public access to information with the introduction of an Agenda Pack. This automatically offers information to the public in a more transparent manner and is more in line with government and best practice guidelines (e.g. ICO Model Publication Scheme vs BPC's current version).

It will be interesting to see how the Openness, Leadership and Transparency of councillors’ decision making and expenditure progresses over the next few months.