Councillor rules

Elected councillors do not have an employment contract with the authority to which they have been elected.

Any employment contract is with the electorate via the ballot box. Councillors, therefore, have none of the accepted employment rights enjoyed by the staff of the council or anyone employed by a company. Technically, ‘the council’ is all the elected members when acting together, and in order to conduct the business of ‘the council’ it can delegate certain closely defined matters to groups of councillors or individual councillors when acting with a senior officer and as detailed in the council’s constitution.

The Local Government Act 2000, promoted by the then Labour government, barred councils from paying an attendance allowance to elected members determined on attendance at meetings.

There is no requirement that a member must serve on any committee and their attendance at the main full council meeting is all that is needed. Legally, a councillor may ‘miss’ meetings over a six month period – the council by a specific vote may give leave to extend this. The problem for Cllr Mrs Warr is that she has not been appointed to any committee of Arun Council and hasn’t attended a council meeting since November 6, 2013. Her absence for an extended period has become an annual event. It is hard to see how, despite technology, she can be ‘up to speed’ on Arun matters from Florida.

Whereas both Cllr Mrs Smee and Cllr Mrs Bowyer serve on committees of Arun Council and regularly attend and contribute.

The only way to overcome disengaged councillors is for the Government to return member allowances to the system linked to meeting attendance that Labour scrapped in 2000.

Ricky Bower

Arun District Council member for East Preston with Kingston

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