Laura Selway was a Parish Councillor on Cambourne Parish Council. Elected at a by-election held on 6/12/2012 Laura has not been attending meetings for the last 6 months. According to the 1972 LGA:
85 Vacation of office by failure to attend meetings.
(1)Subject to subsections (2) and (3) below, if a member of a local authority fails throughout a period of six consecutive months from the date of his last attendance to attend any meeting of the authority, he shall, unless the failure was due to some reason approved by the authority before the expiry of that period, cease to be a member of the authority
Therefore Laura Selway is disqualified.
You would feel that is so simple. I wrote to John Vickery, the Parish Clerk, asking whether Mrs Selway was still a Parish Councillor? John Vickery replied:
Mrs L Selway is still a Councillor for Cambourne as she has been giving valid reasons for her apologies, that have been approved by the Council prior to the expiry of the six month period. Mrs L Selway last gave valid reasons for her apologies on the 7th July 2015 therefore under the legislation it is from this date that the clock starts for the six month period.
This is wrong and I wrote back to John Vickery informing him he is wrong. I then received this email:
Thank you for your email I await guidance from the monitoring officer on the situation.
I therefore wrote to the Monitoring Officer to confirm that Laura Selway was disqualified.
I received the following email from Graham Watts, Deputy Monitoring Officer:
I have been asked to provide you with a response to your below email on behalf of the Monitoring Officer.
The law expressly provides that where a Council Member fails throughout a period of six consecutive months from the date of their last attendance to attend any meeting of the authority then, subject to certain exceptions, they cease to be a member of the authority unless the failure was due to some reason approved before the expiry of that period.
In this case it is my understanding that, even though apologies for absence were received and accepted, no approval or dispensation has been granted by the Council for Mrs Selway's absence before expiration of the six consecutive month period. Unfortunately apologies for absence do not count as the Council granting approval or a dispensation for this purpose and a specific decision to this affect has to be taken before expiration of the six months.
I spoke to the clerk earlier today regarding this issue and advised that the Council would have to take a specific decision to grant approval or a dispensation and that this, along with a reason, would have to be recorded in the minutes, but that the reason did not have to be explicit by way of protecting any sensitive or personal information. If the six months has already passed with no approval or dispensation having been made, which I now understand as being the case, then unfortunately Mrs L Selway must indeed be disqualified as a Member of the Parish Council.
Therefore Laura Selway is disqualified.
The guidance that John Vickery, the Parish Clerk, obtained from the Deputy Monitoring Officer would be the same as above.
Of course I heard nothing back form John Vickery. The silence is deafening. I then posted about this disqualification on the Cambourne Forum and the thread was deleted.
Simon Crocker (Chairman of Cambourne Parish Council) waded in with this message to me:
Laura Selway is going through an extremely traumatic time. There is an excellent reason why her apologies have been approved, and your posts are thoughtless in the extreme. Have a little compassion for gods sake! She reads these boards! I wouldn't wish what you are doing to her on my worst enemy!
She will be resigning as a Cllr soon so just drop it.
I wrote back the following:
Laura Selway hasn't attended a meeting for 6 months. Rather than say put this on the board straight away I emailed the Clerk first. It was only when his reply didn't make sense because he was misapplying the law that I posted on the forum. If on the other hand the Clerk and the Council had applied the law correctly then I would have been satisfied and nothing would have been posted.
As for her resignation she cannot resign from something she is already disqualified from.
This event could very well be seen as a cover up on your part because you and the Clerk were not following the law. Both you and the Clerk should both write to Laura Selway and apologise for your mistake.
Both you and the Clerk should reflect on this event and rather than shooting the messenger you should have both applied the law and then this mess of yours wouldn't have happened and Laura Selway could have fulfilled her term.
The consequences.
If Laura Selway continues as a Parish Councillor the Council would be acting illegally. For instance: If Laura Selway turned up to a meeting and in doing so a quorum of councillors was achieved and was then found to be disqualified then all the decisions made at that meeting would be void because the meeting was inquorate.
Another reason was as a parish Councillor Laura would have been privy to sensitive information about personnel issues. Being disqualified this would mean the Parish council could have breached the Data Protection Act.
John Vickery is the Proper Officer of the parish Council and it is his duty to inform the Council when it is going to act illegally. John Vickery has the qualifications for being a Parish Clerk.
It turns out that Simon Crocker is also a qualified Parish Clerk employed by Caldecote Parish Council and standing for election as a Conservative Candidate for the Bourne Ward.
Ron says: The Parish Clerk and the Chairman of the Parish Council should know the law. Yet they misapplied the law and were found out. Rather than coming clean this incident was whitewashed. I hope both John Vickery and Simon Crocker have written to Laura for not following the law and letting Laura be disqualified.
