Clerk’s Report February 2023
Parish Clerk Report for 27th February 2023
Completed Actions
Copies of all letters and emails will be available to view at the meeting.
- I have publicised the Coronation meeting on the website and around the village.
- I have responded to a resident who was worried about smart meter correspondence; I assured her that having a smart meter would continue to be voluntary.
- I have forwarded a resident’s response about our hedge letter to the councillor who delivered the original letter.
- The Electoral Register has been updated, 6 people have been deleted and 1 added, the total is now 207.
- I have updated the parish details on a site called Parish Online.
- I have circulated a revised version of the 2023-24 Council Diary.
- I have not received an invoice for the website hosting approved at the last meeting, so that has not been paid.
- I have emailed Dicky at the Tors to notify him of the Council’s decision on donations, and he has confirmed that he had not put the collecting dish out.
Training
- I have attended a free webinar organised by NALC about the coronation, but they didn’t have much information at the time.
- I have attended a webinar on the Elections, which provided more information about the arrangements, as below.
Elections
- Nomination packs will be sent to me for distribution in early March. If you wish to stand again, you must take your pack to the Tavistock offices before 4pm 4th April for it to be checked in person. If you fail to do this you will no longer be a councillor on May 10th. The election will be May 4th, assuming that at least 8 people stand for election. If 7 or less stand they will be elected unopposed.
- The nomination paper will require you to include the electoral numbers of the proposer and seconder, which I can supply to you if you let me know their names and addresses.
- Candidates must put their name in full on the nomination paper but they can complete the ‘commonly used’ section if they are known by an abbreviated or different name (ie. Andy instead of Andrew, or perhaps they are known by their middle name rather than forename). However, a candidate cannot use their first name as a commonly used name so that only their first name and surname appear on a ballot paper, thus excluding their middle name.
- From WDBC – The nomination papers must be hand delivered between the hours of 10am and 4pm from Thursday, 23 March and Tuesday, 04 April (to the reception area, West Devon Borough Council offices, Kilworthy Park, Tavistock, PL19 0BZ). Please advise candidates that we will deal with nominations on a first come first served basis but will try to process them quickly and efficiently to save any long waits. Before formally accepting any papers, we will do an informal check – if there are any minor errors it is possible that these can be amended if the candidate is present, otherwise papers might need to be rejected and resubmitted (therefore, please advise candidates to submit them sooner rather than later!)
- Further guidance is available at https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-01/Overview%20Parish%20LGE.pdf