4 July 2022
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Hughenden Parish Council met last Monday on 27 June and it was the first day for HPC’s new permanent Clerk, Emily Ranahan. Welcome Emily.
The agenda didn’t seem very exciting, mostly concerned with the Annual Governance Statement which councils are required by law to complete once a year.
And none of the supporting papers were posted on the website.
So it was perhaps not surprising that there were no members of the public present.
But it was a pity.
The Council’s Communication Working Group hasn’t met yet but I asked at the end of the meeting if the Council could put something out to residents explaining what it was doing.
I also suggested that the Council might try setting up a Zoom connection for Council meetings so the public could attend remotely. (Councillors would still be required to attend in person).
There were no Bucks councillors present so the Council moved on to approve the draft minutes – three sets of them.
Then the Council revoked the ex-officio status of Cllrs Cadwallader and Kearey, HPC’s Chair and Vice Chair respectively. At the May meeting, we were told that the Chair and Vice Chair had ex-officio membership – with voting rights - on all Council’s Committees. This turned out to be incorrect but, just in case, Council revoked whatever ex-officio status the Chair and Vice Chair had.
Cllrs Cadwallader and Kearey were then voted onto all the Committees (except for Cllr Kearey on the HR Committee). And for all those who might suggest this was a waste of time to achieve the same outcome – well maybe. But the point is that the Chair and Vice Chair have no right to be on Committees – they have to be voted on like everyone else by Council.
As Cllr Cadwallader was now formally on the Planning Committee, it allowed me to resign from this Committee; normal practice is for Committees to have one member from each ward.
The Planning Committee hasn’t met since the Council became inquorate and won’t be able to meet until September.
So on to internal auditor’s end year report. The Council already has an interim report from last November with 18 recommendations. As far as I am aware, only one has been signed off and implemented by Council. To this is now added another 10 recommendations, three of them assessed as high priority.
The recommendations assessed as high priority were: -
a) “On an annual basis and as part of the budget setting process, the Council should conduct a review of its Reserves to ensure that their purpose is identified and that they are adequate and not excessive”.
As you will see below, HPC’s reserves continue to go up and up each year.
b) “The Council to review the salary payments for February and March 2022 and confirm whether the amounts paid were correct and properly approved”.
I may have to come back to this item in a future blog if this is not addressed.
c) “Council to consider whether additional bank confirmation should be obtained for the year end balance (as bank statements for all HPC’s account were not available at year end).”
Council’s financial management is still not on a sound basis and I may need to come back to this too.
Then we turned to the Annual Governance Statement for 2021/2022. It was rather odd but, as Cllr Kearey could not attend this meeting, I was the only person present, councillor or staff, who had been on the Council during the last financial year.
There are eight statements of good governance on the form to confirm or not. Personally, I could only confirm two of them for 2021/22.
In the end, Council decided to confirm six of the statements and explain why it thought the Council could not confirm the other two. The two it did not confirm relate to having arrangements for effective financial management and compliance with laws, regulations and Proper Practices.
We all hoped that, at the end of 2022/3, Council will be able to confirm all the eight statements.
On to the Accounting Statements for 2021/2, where, as I say the reserves go ever upwards.
According to the Accounting Statement, Council had reserves of £317K in March 2020, £354K in March 2021 and £399K in March 2022.
Last year Council had an income of £266K (£219K from the precept). It paid out £221K (£84K in staff costs).
Finally, Council approved a number of outstanding payments;
- £45 to a councillor who stepped in to pay for the hire of a village hall for Council meetings when we couldn’t make payments;
- £10,448 for the month of May to the company contracted to provide the services of two part-time locum Clerks to HPC; and
- £232 to Bucks Council to pay the rates as BC had started proceedings to take HPC to court for non-payments.