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Governance, Accounting and Local Government Reform

  What Proposed Changes Could Mean For Parish Councils Listening to or watching meetings and inquiries at Staffordshire County Council and Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council has, for some years, been a dispiriting experience.  The quality of local governance matters: it affects the services residents receive, the way public money is spent and the confidence people can have in the institutions that represent them. Staffordshire has its own political and administrative history.  North Staffordshire has experienced changes in political allegiance, while Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent have often appeared to operate with separate identities and priorities despite their close geographical relationship.  Political rivalry may be part of local democracy, but it should not become a substitute for cooperation, effective administration or accountability. Changes to the processes and practice of local government are therefore worth examining, not simply as an ...
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Local Governance on a Knife-Edge: Or Why Local Governance is Failing

    Whilst the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) appears to be on a mission to improve the standards and conduct of Local Councils, progress seems painfully slow.  Some town, borough and Parish councils appear stuck in a medieval ‘closed’ groove that is proving difficult to shift/open.  Betley Parish, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough and Staffordshire County Councils are but three that come to mind. The 1972 Local Government Act created and empowered local councils to act.  Whilst it gave the appearance of national government sharing power with its localities, there were all kinds of checks and balances in place to ensure this didn’t quite happen.  Vagueness with regard to the rules was one. Another drawback was the calibre of local councillors/representatives.  A system is only as good as those who operate within it. Over the centuries this appears not to have improved and in fact standards have, over the last 15 years at least, taken a ...
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Registering Assets

        Local councils hold within their responsibility many assets, some of them valuable for many reasons. So they should be treated with care and respect by everyone. When this Blog mentioned that deficiencies in the Betley Parish Council Asset Register had been noted, I received a chippy response from Anonymous (of course) asking was I expecting that every blade of grass on the Memorial Garden /Village Green should be listed too?   This did not only display ignorance, it was also an indication that the issue of Assets in Betley was not being taken all that seriously.             At last the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) is doing what it should be doing guiding local Councils towards acceptable procedures and even best practice.   One such measure which is timely is dealing with Asset Registers, which in some councils, are sadly deficient.   Betley Parish Council appears to be one. It i...
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Follow That Money

  When something is not quite right you just know it!    Which is why the election costs for Betley Parish Council need to be revisited - yet again. The Chair and Clerk have been keen to justify the £8,000 estimate of a Parish Council election – which didn’t take place as it turned out - and especially as co-options appear to have been the order of the day for the past 10 years at least, to fill any empty seats. Questions were raised re the justification of such a high figure.   The last time election costs were mentioned in 2022 and earlier, the amount charged and paid was £350.   Thus £8000 appeared to be an unexplained variance. When the figure of £8000 was announced the Clerk stated that this was the figure suggested by the NBC. The Report on Estimated Election Costs tabled at the meeting of 30 June 2026 and filed under an Agenda Item, makes interesting reading.   Indeed, it was found to be almost as confusing as the Parish Council accounts (See...
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The Latest Minutes and Accounts for Betley Parish Council - A Critique

The latest Minutes and Accounts of Betley Parish council are, as usual, both interesting and questionable. However, too few people show interest, and even fewer questions are asked. But then, given how individuals are treated who do ask questions then that might not be surprising.   When I became a Parish Councillor for Wrinehill, my first observations was that this was a council with few if any policies with which to work/operate, and spend public money.   Thus expenditure appeared whimsical and somewhat individualistic. It was difficult to separate the salary of the Clerk from any re-imbursement/expenditure claimed by the Clerk, who was, seemingly, paying invoices from his own pocket.   No account of hours worked were kept, and neither were the tasks undertaken.   Any attempts to regularise the situation were met with defensive negativity even hostility and a bad press in the Minutes for anyone asking the question or making the request. The issues of the Code...
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Making Mayor-y

  Last week I watched the Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council Mayor- making ceremony.   I also tuned in to the last one, never having witnessed one before. The only idea I had of the process was governed by some historic records which had described how the Mayor should be chosen from the best within the community (women were not included).    But these were earlier and possibly better times. By the 19 th Century the whole procedure appears to have fallen into disrepute.   It was only after a hard-won fight that Joseph Mayer of Thistleberry (whose father, Samuel, became Mayor in 1833) claimed that his father was part of a ‘new regime’.   (Unfortunately, the Minutes of meetings over which his father presided, did not seem to bear this out.) Joseph Mayer went on to produce a pamphlet in 1833   describing these mock ceremonies in unflattering and Swiftian terms, indicating that the closed system needed to change if it was to retain its credibility....
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Trusts, Trustees and Charities

  Staffordshire County Council held its Endowment Charities Meeting to discuss the Annual Accounts for 2024/2025 last week.    Staffordshire County Council acts as a custodian trustee for 13 educational endowment charities.   Part of its responsibilities is to oversee both the administrative and investment aspects of these charities.   One of the key duties includes approving the annual accounts before they are submitted to the Charities Commission.   The allocation of income is delegated to the managing trustees of the respective schools, with County Council Officers ensuring that expenditure is in accordance with the Trustees’ intentions.   In scrutinising the accounts it was noted that three of the charities generated an annual income exceeding £25,000.   Income via interest from the funds invested were noted, and that paid from the COIF Investment Fund amounted to approximately £53,000 annually.   However, expenditure, the Report ...
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