21st Century Parish Council

Providing future access to parish minutes, etc is one of this Councils targets, but with 39 parish councils and 3 parish meetings in the district isn't going to be easy.

Many of our parishes depend solely on the one person (often part-time) to do minuting of meetings, arranging contracts, auditing of accounts, etc.

The Clerks to Parish Councils are real jacks of all trades, but not all are experts on the computer. At the moment I have just about half on email, and much fewer have their own website.

These figures are constantly changing, though, as turnover for parish clerks has been phenomenal (wasn't that long ago that Pevensey were interviewing for a new Clerk).

I've copied our E-Government Officer into this email to give you some factual information on what Wealden is doing towards providing a single point access on local authority services generally.

However, I must emphasis that a Parish Council, is an independent authority that we have no control over (just like the County has no control over the District). Anything that we propose, can therefore, only be done with the agreement of all.

As the law currently stands, minutes have to be made publicly available at all reasonable times. For parishes with a part-time Clerk, employed for 2 mornings a week from their own home, and perhaps 3 or 4 evening meetings per month, the opportunity for access is limited.

Website access is indeed the way forward.

Updated: Thursday, September 8, 2005 9:50