REPLY TO JAN HUNTER.

We would like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

REPLY TO JAN HUNTER.

WE BELIEVE THIS COMMENT WAS AIMED AT KEN LYONS SO HE HAS AGREED TO POST A PERSONAL RESPONSE.

Hi Jan Hunter, thank you for your comment, I shall try to answer all your points.

If you have read previous posts you will be aware that I make a point of letting readers know that I am far from being an expert on anything let alone Council Meetings. My view and opinion is given as a lowly resident and not as a knowledgeable Councillor. I arrived at my opinion by researching the requirements for Council Meetings and the role of the various participants.  My opinion, and it’s only my opinion, is that the procedures followed during many Council Meetings do not marry up with the requirements, I shall be posting on this subject in the near future, maybe you would care to read it and point out where I’m going wrong.

You suggest I should put my name forward to be a Councillor, I have been asked to do that by a number of residents also by a Ward Councillor, I have considered it and rejected the idea. In 2011 we had, I believe without checking, 6 or 7 new councillors elected to make a difference to how the council operated and how it involves and connects to residents. In my view and it’s just my view from observation, those aims have not been realised, if 6 good residents are unable to change things, what makes you think one more would make any difference?

You could very well be correct in that I sometimes rant and I respect your opinion in that regard. But, at least I take an interest and at least I’m passionate about it and I do believe that there is a need for some one to speak out, if no one speaks out the situation will only deteriorate further and we could well be left with chaos. In that event we would not be able to put all the blame on the Parish Council because we as residents would be equally at fault by not speaking out.

Yes we have had almost 300 comments though I didn’t mention the number of emails as that wasn’t referred to in the previous comment from ‘anonymous’, who by the way made the same points you are making. You have stated very emphatically that we only publish comments that are from the same person, unless you have made almost 300 comments to this site you already know that isn’t correct. In any event many of them are ‘anonymous’ comments and we have no idea who they are from. If all comments are from the same person I can only suggest that person is really very fickle because the comments cover a wide range of opinion from pure opposition to total support, which suggests to me they are not all from the same person.

You ask “why?” we only publish comments from the same person, we appear to be going round in circles, I can only tell you that we publish all comments except for a number of comments on very recent posts, which we have already covered.

You suggest I am devoting a great deal of time to this Blog, I can assure you I don’t spend a great deal of time on here, I have other things I need to do and other people I need to consider. That is possibly why some of my posts may come across as “ranting”, I don’t re-read them 20 times in order to ‘polish’ them up before I publish them, so again I apologise if they come across as “kinder Garden” rants, I certainly don’t mean them to.

You go on to suggest that I say that I have “much support”, as far as I’m aware I have never said that, though I have thanked people for their support as they have given it. You say I should make the Parish Council and Public aware of my support and opinion. 

To date there has been more than 16,000 page views on this blog, I don’t know who those readers are, it may be only one person who has read this Blog but that person would have had to read it 16,000 times, I don’t consider that to be a realistic proposition. As for making the Parish Council aware, you will see in previous posts that I made every attempt at making contact with the Council to enter into a dialog to resolve any issues I might have with them. The Council has never responded so I now do it the only way that appears to be left open to me as a resident, registered voter and precept payer of the Parish.

As for me being bored, as far as I’m aware you don’t know me so I’m unsure how you reach that conclusion, you may have noticed that there are planned breaks in this Blog and they can last 5 months where I nor anyone else posts on this site, if we were bored we wouldn’t have those breaks, would we?

You are correct to some degree in saying that I’m just one person, I do not and will not ask others to fight my battles nor will I hide behind the skirts of women, the Council have been aware who I am from the start and they are still aware today. My door has never been closed to the Council, which has been my whole point.

That I think answers the points you raise, but if I could just add. Your comment has been similar to many others in that they want to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the message. You clearly disagree with me on, it would appear, most points. If you think or know anything on this site that is incorrect, dishonest or misleading please contact us again with details of same and we shall try to address them, in doing so you would be a great help in resolving the issues through debate or at least possibly coming to an open conclusion.

Thank you for your comments Jan and very many thanks for reading.

KL

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS. POST2.

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETINGS POST 2.

POSTED  BY KENNETH LYONS.

THE POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES TO THE PARISH AND RESIDENTS.

Some might say ”so what its no big deal”, it has the potential to become a big deal if that meeting faces a legal challenge at any point, for the following reasons,

1.   The council convened an illegal Council Meeting and therefore had no legal authority to conduct any council business.

2.  During that illegal meeting the Council co-opted a new member and because that member was co-opted during a Council meeting that had no legal authority to conduct Council business, that member is not a lawfully co-opted Parish Councillor and is therefore still simply a member of the public.

3.  For approximately 17 months and probably as many Council meetings the council have had a member of the public sitting on the Council taking part in Council deliberations and taking part in voting to approve or reject items of Council business.

4.  By definition every council meeting that member of the public has attended and taken part in is also illegal because under legislation and the Council’s Standing Orders, a member of the public is not permitted to take part in Council business and deliberations because ‘standing orders are in force’ and is certainly not allowed to vote on Council business. Members of the public have a vote at Parish Meetings not Council Meetings

5.  Every month an item of council business is the approval of Minutes relating to the previous meeting, which in my opinion, potentially generates it’s own legal problems because the previous meeting with a member of the public sitting on the Council was in itself unlawful. That will continue to be the case until the fault is corrected.

6. When Council minutes are approved and entered into the ‘Minutes Book’ those minutes, in law are sacrosanct, they cannot be rescinded or amended. Every Councillor has approved those minutes as an accurate and honest account of the previous meeting. The problem with that is, the minutes are not an honest or accurate account of the previous meeting because they do not identify that a member of the public took part in the meeting contrary to legal provisions.

My understanding is those minutes cannot be altered or rescinded without the formal approval of the High Court, the potential financial risk to the public purse of Preston must be huge. This would make the cost of an audit by the Audit Commission pall into insignificance.

There are many other potential consequences of convening illegal Council meetings, which we do not intend to cover here, suffice it to say they are many and during such meetings individual Councillors are legally responsible for their actions and decisions during those meetings, they are not recognised as acting in their capacity as Parish Councillors because the meeting was not legally convened and they are therefore simply members of the public, who do not have any legal authority to commit to binding Council decisions!

Councillors may cry that they didn’t know, but they are required to know, that’s why they are there, to manage the affairs of the Parish. The fact that they haven’t bothered to find out what should happen isn’t a defence.

I wrote to the Parish Council following the October 2012 Council Meeting and in time for the November Council Meeting, informing the Council of the error. At that point the Council was in a position to correct the error without it ever being entered into the Minutes Book. The council could have listed the co-option process for November and co-opted the new councillor legally. There has never been any acknowledgement or response to that letter and as far as I am aware the error has never been corrected.

It is possible the Council may get away without the meeting without being challenged, if that turns out to be the case they will have been very fortunate. On the other hand if the Council continue to disregard its legal obligations it will at some point have to answer for its actions and that puts the public purse of Preston at unnecessary risk.

Its time for the Council to carry out a full ‘Internal Procedural Audit’, identify the points of failure and correct them, when they have been corrected the Council should install a monitoring system to ensure continued future compliance with its legal duties and procedural obligations. It is after all the Council that has responsibility to ensure the legislation is observed and therefore any failing is down to the Parish Council and individual Councillors. For far too many years we have had a Council that ignores the laws it is supposed to observe and in doing so has managed to waste more than £20,000 of public funds belonging to the residents of Preston.

Any ‘Corporate Body’ is required to operate with the requirements of the laws, which are appropriate to it, and, it’s their responsibility to ensure the organisation complies with the requirements placed upon it. In this respect a Parish Council is no different to any other ‘Corporate Body’.

It’s worth noting that since the issue was brought to the Council’s attention in October 2012, it has since that date posted all ‘Notice of Meetings’ in accordance to the provisions of the LGA 1972. This shows the Council are aware of its past flaws and have acted in this instance to correct it, if only in part, the consequences of the flaw have not been addressed and are therefore continuing to mount. If the council had been faultless in giving 2 clear days notice and it was legal for them to do so, in my opinion it would still be giving just 2 clear days notice, if only to prove a point.

There is an error in the above paragraph, the Council does not actually comply with the requirements of the LGA 1972 when posting the ‘Notice of Council Meeting’. We will be covering those other failings in a future post but for now we are only dealing with the requirement for 3 clear days notice to be given. Though it must be said the omissions that are currently occurring make the current Council Meetings just as unlawful.

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.

UNLAWFUL COUNCIL MEETING ON 10TH OCTOBER 2012.

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

POSTED BY KENNETH LYONS.

This post has been split into 3 parts,

1.  Legal requirements on Parish Councils and Legal references.

2.  The potential consequences to the Parish and Residents.

3.  Why we believe the 10^th October 2012 Council meeting to have been unlawful.

Post 1.  LEGAL REQUIREMENTS ON A PARISH COUNCIL AND LEGAL REFERENCES

By law, a Parish Council is required to abide by certain legal requirements. Regulations governing how Parish Councils operate and the procedures they must observe and follow are contained in many Acts of Parliament and delegated legislation.

The main items for convening a legal Parish Council meeting are contained in The Local Government Act 1972 (LGA 1972). We will outline those requirements as listed in the regulation so anyone who wishes to confirm or challenge our opinion is able to.

An official Council meeting cannot be legally convened if the Council has failed to observe the provisions of the LGA 1972. If any Council fails to observe the legal requirements, any Council meeting it may hold is not a Council meeting and consequently that meeting would have no legal authority to conduct any Council business, any business such a meeting did consider would be null-and-void. 

LEGAL REFERENCES

Lawfully convened Parish Council Meetings.

The legal provisions under The Local Government Act 1972 and other legislation are very specific.

In order for a Parish Council Meeting to be lawful and legally authorised to conduct Council business and commit to binding decisions and resolutions following Council discussions, the council must adhere to certain legally prescribed prerequisite actions, these include:

1.  (LGA 1972, Sch 12, paras 10(2)(a) and 26(2)(a). At least three clear days notice, not including the day of issue, Sunday or the day of the meeting, before a meeting of the council a notice of the time and place of the meeting must be affixed in some conspicuous place in the locality, (in the Case of Preston, this would be the village notice board)

2.  (Case Law, Longfield Parish Council v Wright). A council must Specify on such notice all items of business proposed to be transacted at the meeting, a council cannot lawfully decide any matter which is not specified in the summons (Agenda).

3.  (LGA 1972, Sch 12, paras 10(2)(b) and 26(2)(b). A summons to attend the meeting, must specify all the business proposed to be transacted at the meeting and signed by the proper officer of the council, shall be delivered by hand or sent by post to the usual place of residence of every member of the council.

4.  (LGA 1972 Part 2s10(2)). Legal definition of 3 clear days. The day on which the notice was issued or posted, the day of the meeting, a Sunday, a day of the Christmas break or a bank holiday or a day appointed for public thanks giving or mourning shall not count towards the 3 clear days.

Why does the law require Parish Council’s to give 3 clear days notice to the public? It is to enable the public to be aware of the business that is to be transacted during that Council meeting and, it allows members of the public to research any item on the agenda they might have an interest in before the meeting is convened. In order that members of the public have sufficient time to research any item the law requires all Parish Councils to give at least 3 clear days notice.

Until recently and at the time of the Parish Council meeting in question, the Parish Council held its Council Meeting on the second Wednesday of each month except August.

Bearing in mind the day the Notice is posted, any Sunday and the day of the meeting cannot be counted as part of the 3 clear days notice. If over the weekend a Parish Council decided to have a Council Meeting on the coming Wednesday it would presumably post a Notice on the Monday. As Monday (the day the notice was posted) and Wednesday (the day of the meeting) cannot be counted, that leaves 1 clear days notice (Tuesday). Therefore the Council could not legally hold a meeting on that Wednesday, it would have to cancel that meeting and rearrange it following 3 clear days notice. If the Council posted the Notice on Monday the earliest a Council Meeting could be legally convened would be Friday of the same week because the Council would have given the required 3 clear days notice, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

There are times when human fallibility plays its part and for whatever reason be it forgetfulness or family crisis, if 3 clear days notice is not given, the Council meeting must be cancelled, whatever the inconvenience and rearranged following the required 3 clear days notice.

In the case of Preston Parish Council, failing to give 3 clear days notice was not the result of an oversight, it was normal practice. This had been done many, many times over the foregoing months and years.

A Parish Council meeting was held on 10^th October 2012, at this Council meeting a new councillor was co-opted onto the Council, we have no intention of naming the co-opted Councillor because that councillor is an innocent victim of the Parish Council’s sloppy procedural control.

The 10^th October was as normal the second Wednesday in the month and for a legally convened Council meeting to be held on that day the Council was required to give 3 clear days notice. This meant the notice had to be posted before midnight on Friday 5^th October, which would have given 3 clear days notice, Saturday, Monday and Tuesday.

As we will show later the Council actually posted the notice of that meeting on Saturday 6^th October 2012, it wasn’t simply a traffic delay, which meant the deadline was missed by a few minutes or so, it was posted almost half way through the day.

Under those circumstances the Council meeting of 10^th October was required to be cancelled, and rearranged for Thursday 11^th October at the earliest.

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.

"IMPOSSIBLE"

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

IMPOSSIBLE!

We have had an e-mail from a reader suggesting we are wrong to use the word impossible in a post dated 9^th February 2014, and that the incident could have happened the way Group B describes.

The person gave no reason as to why he thinks we’re wrong, he made no attempt to put forward an argument to support his view. If he has an argument to support his theory we do hope he will share it with us, maybe we could debate the issue, we would welcome that, so here’s our view.

This post is our honest opinion, it does not intend to portray any part as fact, that remains the domain of others. Our opinion is given here on an event we believe to be in the Public Interest.

We don’t accept the misuse of the word impossible, and these are our reasons for not accepting it;

1.     If a group of people describe the conditions they observed at a specific point in time and place as being a bright and sunny day with high temperatures ideal for sunbathing on the beach and therefore thoroughly enjoyable, we would under normal circumstances accept that as being accurate and truthful.

However, if we then have a group of people who emphatically state they were there at the same place and same point in time as the first group but they observed the conditions to be a dark night with freezing temperatures and horrendous thunderstorms and the only way to seek relief was to get under cover where it was dry and warm, this throws doubt on both statements.

In our opinion it’s impossible for them both to be correct because they are describing events that cannot have happened at the same point in time and at the same place. There is absolutely no connection or similarity between the 2 accounts, they are effectively 2 separate events, therefore they are mutually exclusive to each other and it’s therefore impossible for them both to have happened at the same point in time and at the same place.

A definition of Mutually Exclusive as taken from ‘Wikipedia’ is,

“Two events are mutually exclusive if they cannot occur at the same time. An example is tossing a coin once, which can result in either heads or tails, but not both”.

In our opinion, because of their ‘Mutually Exclusive’ nature they are also ‘Collectively Exhaustive’  because there is only 2 possible outcomes, they’re either true or they’re false. They can’t each be a little bit right at the same time as both being a little wrong because there are no similarities or connection between them, they are effectively two different events. The same applies to tossing a coin once, you either get ‘heads’ or you get ‘tails’, it isn’t possible to get a little bit of each!

It is therefore impossible for them both to have happened at the same time and in the same place.

2.   In our honest opinion, for Group B statements, to attract any misguided credibility, they were entirely dependent on none of their peers [Parish Councillors] submitting statements that contradicted them.

This would probably have resulted in a member of the public making a complaint about the behaviour of a Councillor and 4 Councillors submitting statements that directly contradicted the circumstances given by the complainant.

With 4 councillors who are deemed to be upstanding and honest members of our community, entrusted to making decisions on behalf of the Parish and who are united in their appraisal with no other dissenting opinion from their peers, they could have discredited the complainant.

Assuming the councillors were aware of the absolute need for no dissenting statements, what could have made them think there would be no dissenting statements? Was something tentatively agreed between the whole of the Parish Council in private? There were certainly a number of ‘In Camera’ [Private] meetings at that time, Council minutes show that to be the case. In our view it must have been discussed between the whole council in private because it would need agreement between the whole council to make the tactic viable.

Unfortunately [or fortunately as the case may be] it didn’t quite turn out as planned, 5 of their peers disagreed with the Councillors with vastly differing accounts of the event, which must inevitably cast a very serious doubt on the validity of the conflicting statements. That is why it must be resolved by a thorough and independent investigation.

3.   If by some psychotic aberration we accept the 4 statements to be an accurate and honest account of the incident, as the e-mailer suggests, we are still left with a big problem.

That problem is, we are then left with 5 statements from Councillors, which because of their exclusivity from the other group of 4 Councillors must by definition be untruthful.

That leaves us with an even greater problem and brings the whole of the Parish Council into question because that would raise the spectre of a conspiracy and vendetta against a member of the public by the Parish Council as well as collusion between councillors who gave statements and Councillors who refused to give statements. That’s a whole different ball game.

Whichever way you look at this it shows our Parish Council to be corrupt and it is essential that an Independent Investigation is carried out to resolve the issue and put some faith and confidence back into the collective public mind.

4.    For any sensible group who wished to mislead such an investigation it would have been, in our opinion, far better to acknowledge the correct details of the incident and put a differing magnitude and intensity on those details to lessen the impact as a tactic of mitigation. Such an approach we believe could be put down to differences in individual recollections and that would introduce a degree of doubt. It would in our opinion have introduced doubt not only to the Standards Committee but could well have put a sprinkling of doubt in the minds of other witnesses.

In our opinion, by inventing a whole new set of events it may well sway the official body to be ‘inconclusive’ but we believe it would also entrench the positions of other witnesses and particularly the complainant.

In short , and in our opinion, it implies the complainant has been dishonest along with 5 other Parish Councillors, brings the Parish Council into disrepute and Local Government is seen to be corrupt, there is no place for this kind of behaviour at any level of Local Government. 

We posted recently on a Council vacancy that has remained unfilled for about 3 months because of a lack of interest from residents. If this is the best level of behaviour the Parish Council is able to muster up, it shows the Parish Council and Local Government in general in an extremely bad light and we are not surprised in any lack of interest shown by residents.

Doing nothing is simply not an option!

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.

Response to; A registered elector and taxpayer of Preston 2.

We would just like to remind readers, this blog is not run by any one person, it has a number of residents as members and we work as a team, no single member has full control on what appears. If you wish to comment on anything on this blog you should either comment through the normal channel or email us direct, If you would like to join our group please email us, thank you.

2. 15 steps needed to successfully demand a Parish Poll.

Step One.

Obtain six signatories (full signatures and addresses) on the ‘Notice of Meeting’ DOCUMENT (1). Once all the signatures have been obtained you can complete the top part of the Notice by filling in the location and time, day and date of the intended Parish Meeting.

Note that you must allow at least seven days between the date of the Notice and the date of the Parish Meeting. Our advice is to allow at least eight to ten days.

Note the following points: Check and ensure that your intended location for the meeting (Community Hall?) is available and what it will cost. You cannot use licensed premises.

Ensure that on the day of the meeting the key will be available for you an hour before the meeting starts.

Meetings are allowable during the evening, not during the day, so fix the time for your meeting at 7 p.m.

Photocopy your Notice of Meeting DOCUMENT (1) making sufficient copies to be used (a) as Posters advertising the Parish Meeting and (b) as copies to accompany your letters to the Parish and East Riding Councils. Always retain the original.

Step Two.

Place your photocopies of the Notice of Meeting in well-used locations in the parish such as, Post Office, village shop, community hall, parish notice boards, Social Media Sites, etc. Make and keep a note of exactly where and when you placed these notices.

Step Three.

Immediately after placing your notices as above, and on the same day, send letters to both the Chairman and Clerk to the Parish Council DOCUMENT (2) notifying them both of your arrangements for a Parish Meeting.

You must enclose a copy of the Notice of Meeting with your letter. It is preferable if you can deliver these letters and enclosures by hand. If not, ensure the letters are sent by Recorded Delivery.

Step Four.

Write a Press Release  and distribute (by hand, post, email or telephone) to local newspapers, Social Media sites, etc.

Step Five.

Prepare sufficient copies (approx three dozen) of the Agenda DOCUMENT (3) and retain for distribution at the Parish Meeting.

Step Six.

During the time between the compilation of the Notice of Meeting and the Parish Meeting, continually ensure that your ten supporters (more if available) know of the details of the Parish Meeting and that they are able to confirm their availability. It is as well to check on this more than once and certainly on the day of the meeting. It is advisable to have two or three substitutes standing by.

Step Seven.

Prior to the Parish Meeting prepare and practice your Proposal and speech DOCUMENT (4). Be totally conversant with the content of what you intend to say and, if the chairman of the meeting is not the Parish Council Chairman, allow the appointed chairman to see your speech and be aware of what you will be saying.

Step Eight.

On the day of the Parish Meeting ensure your ten supporters (plus substitutes) are still available for the meeting. On the evening of the meeting have a reliable person on the door, checking (a) that your ten supporters (and substitutes) are present and (b) who of those entering are on the electoral roll for the parish (if possible). The person checking should take names and addresses of those entering and retain that record. 

IMPORTANT NOTE:- Because a person is a resident of Preston does not automatically ensure they are on the electoral register for the parish.

Step Nine.

After the distribution of the Agenda DOCUMENT (3) to all those present at the meeting the organiser (you) should make your proposal and address the meeting from your script DOCUMENT (4).

IMPORTANT NOTE: - It is imperative that both you and the Chairman try and stop any amendments being put forward from the floor, which will weaken the proposal or confuse potential voters. Once you have given your speech the Chairman should ask for a seconder and then a vote. Ensure that all those voting are parishioners. (Their names must be recorded in the minutes).

As soon as that has been accomplished you then have to read the ‘procedural point’ and request a vote on it (no need for a seconder). In relation to both set of votes, if ten or one third of those present, which ever is the least, vote in favour then a poll may be requested. The meeting should then be closed.

Ensure that the minutes have been properly kept. The chairman, the secretary and you are all required to sign the minutes, the agenda and a copy of the Notice of Meeting.

Step Ten.

On the day after the meeting dispatch a letter DOCUMENT (5) to both the Chairman and Clerk of the Parish Council (if not present at the meeting). Send a letter to East Riding Council DOCUMENT (6) requesting a parish poll. The letter to East Riding County Council should be delivered by hand and a receipt obtained or by Recorded Delivery.

Step Eleven.

Upon notification from the East Riding Council,

(a) That it will organise a poll and,

(b) The time, day, date and location of the a poll, dispatch a Press Release to local      newspapers, Social Media sites, HU12 Online, Preston Village Debate, etc.

Check with East Riding County Council and obtain their agreement for you and named others to attend the count, Preston having 2 Wards may require 2 polling booths if so ensure you have them both covered.

Step Twelve.

In the week leading up to the poll you and your supporters should leaflet every dwelling in the parish with two leaflets. The first leaflet will need to be an informational leaflet concerned with Play Park, how it’s being dealt with by the Parish Council and costs, etc.

The second leaflet will give the time, day, date and location of the poll and will urge parishioners to vote and should be distributed on the day before the poll.

This is the final reminder of the poll.

Step Thirteen.

Do not attend the poll (other than to vote). Stay away from the polling booth. You will already have been told when the polling booth will close (usually 9 p.m.). Attend at that time (with whoever else has been identified as an observer) and witness the count. You will probably be asked to confirm the details of the poll. Do so.

Step Fourteen.

Prepare a press release giving the result of the poll suitable for distribution to local newspapers, Social Media sites etc.

Step Fifteen.

Prepare and dispatch a letter of thanks to East Riding Council including particular areas where the staff have been especially helpful. In the same letter ask how much the poll has cost.

You have now completed the organising of a parish poll in Preston. Well done.

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.