An “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD, supporter and friend of The Bridge, examining the root cause of how and why so much of the lowest tier of local government is in such an intractable mess.
Parish and Town Councillors are generally very eager to proclaim that they are volunteers – amateurs – offering their services to their communities free of charge, though not without the considerable reward of (hopefully) being acknowledged as pillars of society (or so they see themselves).
The reality is that, precisely because of their amateurism, they are generally unschooled in local government legislation. They have little or no grasp of the limitations to the ‘powers’ of Parish and Town Councils – or the concomitant duties and responsibilities. Though rudimentary training is available (through bodies such as the Yorkshire Local Councils Associations and the National Association of Local Councils), few local Councillors ever avail themselves of the opportunity. Of those who do, few gain any real insight from what is usually limited to a three-hour group session.
Inevitably, it falls to the Parish/Town Clerk (also the Proper Officer and the Responsible Financial Officer) to keep the Councillors on the straight and narrow.
For those small Councils that are blessed with an often younger, competent and qualified Clerk/RFO with a strong sense of probity, this system seems to work – after a fashion.
Unfortunately, such is human nature that when a group of (generally) elderly Councillors – many of whom are acutely aware of having no local government knowledge and no electoral mandate – is confronted by a younger, personable, more experienced and articulate Clerk/RFO, it is all too easy to abdicate all responsibility and hand all control into the hands of the Clerk/RFO.
This is what has come to be known as ‘The Cult of the Clerk’. The Council’s actions become little more than an extension NOT of the will of the people, nor even the will of the majority of Councillors themselves, but of the will of the unelected Clerk – the puppet master.
Fortunately – and, I would like to think, because of the in-depth scrutiny of smaller Councils by internet news magazines like the North Yorks Enquirer – the wider public is now becoming far more alert to the abuse of power exercised by a certain class of rogue Clerks who are unscrupulously turning the Council’s power to tax residents (via the Parish Precept) to their own personal advantage. Unlike larger Councils, Towns and Parishes have no ‘cap’ on their Precepts, which can be increased without limit to encompass more-than-generous salaries, pensions and other ‘perks’ for their Clerks/RFOs.
These rogue Clerks often find employment at several small Council’s within a given geographical area. I recall a Clerk in the Borough of Scarborough who managed five or six Parish Councils. On top of five or six salaries, this particular Clerk also engineered appointment as the respective Councils’ web-master (at a fee of between £2.5K and £3.5K per annum, per Council) using a simple WordPress site-template in which only the name of the Parish, a couple of photos and the relevant documentation varied – a total workload amounting to a couple of hours per month. This ‘racket’ went unchallenged (or unnoticed) by a total of over thirty ‘volunteer’ Parish Councillors, none of whom (one can all too easily imagine) had the first idea how to set up or maintain a web-site – or to exert any control over their wayward Clerks.
In recent months, the Enquirer has received cries for help against rogue Clerks from several Parish Councils in North Yorkshire, Norfolk, Leicestershire, Cornwall, Kent, East Lindsey (Lincs.), Allandale (Cumbria), Glossopdale (Derbyshire) and Stockton-on-Tees. Time and health permitting, it is my firm intention to expose petty and grand corruption (and incompetence) at each of these parasitic institutions.
Pieter Breugel the Elder; ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’
