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UNLAWFUL
COUNCIL MEETINGS. POST 3.
POSTED
BY KENNETH LYONS.
WHY
WE BELIEVE THE 10TH OCTOBER COUNCIL MEETING TO HAVE BEEN ILLEGAL
We had taken note of when the Council posted its
Notice and Agenda for upcoming Council meetings for some months, just to be
sure we were in fact correct that the Council was failing to give the required
3 days minimum notice and to confirm it wasn’t simply a ‘one off’.
Photographs were taken of the Parish Notice Board in
Preston North during the evening of Friday 5th October (Notice had to be posted before midnight on friday 5th October) and again
shortly after midnight on Saturday 6th October, those photographs
are date and time stamped. We know that time and date stamps can be manipulated
so in order to avoid an accusation of dishonesty, we waited until the first
editions of the newspapers were available later on the Saturday morning.
We purchased a Saturday edition of the Daily Mirror at
approx 6:15am on Saturday 6th October. When we returned to the
Preston Parish Notice Board there was still no agenda and notice of the Council
meeting posted. We took photographs of the Parish Notice Board with the
Saturday newspaper clearly visible showing that at that time the Notice of
Meeting had not yet been posted. The photographs shown were taken at 06:30am, 07:56
and 08:44am further photographs were taken showing the Notice had not been
posted up to that point. We returned to the Notice Board at approx. 10:05am the
same morning to find the Notice had by then been posted.
My understanding is that the National Newspapers are
finalised and printed overnight and the Saturday Edition is certainly not
available for purchase the day before its printed. So we can be certain the
Notice of Meeting was not posted before midnight on Friday, it was posted
between 08:44am and 10:05 am on Saturday 06th October 2012. The day
the notice is posted cannot be counted as part of the minimum 3 days notice
giving only 2 clear days Notice of the meeting, Monday and Tuesday.
This isn’t missing the deadline by just a few minutes
because of traffic it represents a blatant disregard to the legal processes and
procedures the Parish Council is required to abide by.
Saturday morning edition of the Daily Mirror used in
photographs, dated Saturday 06th October 2012. The paper was
purchased at 06:15am from the Newsagents in Hedon.
At the time the Photographs were taken, in the early
hours of 6th October 2012 the Notice Board contained the following
posters.
Right
hand side.
1.
Preston Community Hall.
2. List
of Councillors for North and South Preston.
3.
Vacancy for a councillor.
4. Notice
of Audit and Annual Return.
Left
hand side.
1.
Neighbourhood team of Police Officers.
2. Family
information and fun days.
3. Preston Walkers.
When the Notice of Meeting was eventually posted it
was posted in the lower right hand side, replacing or covering the notice of a
vacancy for a Parish Councillor, next to the Audit and Annual Return Notice and
below the list of Parish Councillors.
The newspaper mounted on
top of the Parish Notice Board showing the Notice of Agenda and Meeting had not
yet been posted. Taken at 06:28:40am on Saturday 6th October 2012.
Photo taken at 07:56:41am Saturday 6th
October 2012. Still no ‘Notice’.
Photograph taken at 08:44:26. Still no Notice of
Council Meeting.
This process was followed for some months prior to
October 2012, after we realised what was in fact taking place. Without some
degree of prove the Council would simply have lied and denied it and started to
post the Notices in time and no one would have been any the wiser.
Its abundantly clear to us that the 10th
October 2012 Council Meeting was indeed illegal, the council therefore had no
legal authority to conduct any Council business let alone co-opt a new
Councillor. This was not the first or only time co-options have taken place
during unlawfully convened Council Meetings.
It is not acceptable for the Council to constantly
react to residents and correct the faults in procedure only when residents find
them out. This situation was
brought to the Councils attention in October 2012 and the Council now post the
Notice of Council meeting giving the required notice. If it hadn’t been brought
to the Council’s attention the practice would still be continuing to day and
with another co-option in the making we could easily have 3 or 4 members of the
public sitting as Parish Councillors.
If there are
any residents with similar experience of the council do please contact us by
comment or email. If you wish we will post on your experience without your
identity being released, or not post anything if you simply want to share your
experience it’s entirely up to you. We would love to hear your story, your not
alone, there are a number of us, let us compare notes and grow as a group.
Amazing how the only comments are from the same person ! member of your group by anychance ?
ReplyDeleteReply to Anonymous.
DeleteWe don’t really understand the point of your comment, there has been almost 300 comments, are you suggesting they are all from the same person? Or are you suggesting the comments on recent posts are from the same person? If it is the later, yes the last 3 comments prior to yours are from the same person, we have confirmed the identity of that person and are currently discussing an issue by email.
Maybe your suggesting we shouldn’t allow a person to comment more than once, wouldn’t that be just a little silly? Wouldn’t you then say we’re not publishing comments and being selective?
Maybe if the comments were anonymous as your comment is, maybe you would suggest they’re all figments of our imagination. The point we’re trying to make is that your comment doesn’t really make any sense to us.
Maybe you would like to put something to us with a little more detail, and with a little more clarity and in your own name, you could always email us. We’re pretty sure readers would like to know who you are and what point your actually trying to make.
Your last point is easily answered, no the commenter is not a member of our small group, but it does look as if he may be very soon, in which case we will not accept comments from him unless he makes his affiliation known.
There has been a number of comments to some recent posts, anonymously, which we have not published. We have already made readers aware of that so we consider our hands to be clean.
Thank you for your comment Anonymous, we hope this response goes some way to answering you and thank you for reading.
The Team
PPCP