Parish Council Minutes

[SimFH]

The Parish Council website reads: "Please note: Minutes of Council meetings are published after each meeting and are potentially subject to alterations before approval. Should the minutes be altered, the updated version will be reposted here."
It should perhaps read "Minutes of Council meetings are published after the next meeting have approved them" ie at least 4 weeks after the meeting in question, by the time they are posted perhaps 5 weeks.  Therefore if you are following what is happening on the Parish Council you will always be out of date. 
As someone who always reads the Parish Council meeting minutes can I respectfully ask that the minutes are posted after the meeting in question - I, and I am sure others would happily acknowledge that they are subject to next meeting approval in the normal way of things.
Thank you

[HilaryB]

I totally agree with the concept and have always found it frustrating - but when I was Clerk I was reprimanded quite severely by the legal eagles at East Northants Council for printing minutes until they had been officially proposed and seconded at the following meeting.  Please do not blame the PC for this, is is apparently a statutory requirement!

[TeePee]

In that case, do we not need a (swift) short report, independent of Minutes ?

[SimFH]

Of course there is a significant flaw in the advice of the East Northants legal eagles.  If you choose to look for the meetings of ENC  you will find that as the meeting date approaches they post on their website the meeting Agenda and associated papers which happens to include the minutes of the previous meeting of that Committee - which quite clearly is BEFORE they have been properly proposed and seconded at the meeting!

If you head down the road and across the County boundary you will see that Wansford Parish Council (it appears meeting tonight) post on their website DRAFT minutes of the previous meeting which are available before their next meeting.

I think we can all differentiate between DRAFT minutes (which I am sure would be checked by the Chairman before being posted) and formally approved minutes.

It's a shame that Mr Pickles is no longer Secretary of State for Local Government (I never thought that I would say that) but I am sure that he would have disagreed with the ENC Legal Eagles. 

Please post the minutes (DRAFT) after each meeting so that we know what's going on.   

[mgd]

Anyone can turn up to a PC meeting, if they are that interested to hear what we are up to and report to the wider community, good idea. Or if that is too much trouble ask any parish Councillor.

[SimFH]

I guess we have a choice, sit through 2 -3 hours of a meeting once a month (waiting for the bit of the agenda which is of particular interest to us, and risk finding out that there's not much on that agenda item that month, say 5 minutes)

Or read the minutes 5 / 6 weeks after the event in my own time.

I am aware of when the meetings are but it clashes with something else I do.  However I (or others) can quite reasonably also decide to use the other forms of communication that exists to support the communication of what the Parish Council does, namely the Parish Council website and this Forum.