Features · Quorate.

Setting your council up

Council set-up has a page for each part of your council's details. Each part is marked Recorded, Not started or Optional, and you can stop and come back.
You find your parish by typing the first few letters of its name. Before anything is saved, you confirm the boundary we hold from its outline, its area, the district and the parishes around it.
You name the local planning authority whose register we search for you.
When the window for a planning application closes before the next meeting, you record who your council has resolved may comment and on what conditions.
You record whether the council certifies itself exempt from a limited assurance review. The year-end agenda changes to match.
You record which members have agreed to take the summons by email, and the meeting the council put the question at.
You record the day the council resolved that it meets the conditions for the general power of competence. Until then, the page says what is still outstanding.
You record where a request for an election is sent. It prints on your notice of a casual vacancy.
The standing agenda is the shape every one of your agendas starts from, in your council's own wording.
Above item 1, your agenda prints your council's own wording. Nothing prints there if it has adopted none.
Two months before your insurance renewal date, a card on Today reminds you to put quotes to a meeting.
You can start the standing agenda from an agenda you have already sent. Paste it in or choose its Word or PDF file. You check every item before it is saved.
You give your name and signature once, on Your account. Every council you clerk for prints them on its notice, agenda, summons and minutes.
Each council's Clerk page keeps your title and phone number for that council.
Your account lists every council you clerk for. Choosing one takes you into it.

Assets and play areas

The asset register holds everything the council owns: land, buildings, street furniture, vehicles and play equipment. Each item has the day it was acquired and what it cost.
Nothing on the register is overwritten. A correction or a disposal is recorded beside the original.
The register gives its figure at the year end and how it moved in the year, item by item. You download it as a tagged PDF and a CSV.
Two months before a play area's annual inspection is due, a card on Today asks you to book the inspector.
The inspection report goes on the next agenda still open. Each finding becomes an action on your list. Left without a date, it is due sooner the higher its risk.
A play area's reports, findings, incidents and the record of making it safe download as one record to hand over if a claim is made.

The year on the calendar

Meetings holds the council's calendar. You add one meeting at a time, or we work out a whole year from the pattern your council meets on.
A pattern that would land on the wrong day of the week is refused.
A date that does not exist is refused in the box you typed it into.
The year ahead is offered to you as the calendar you have runs down.
Checks shows whether each council year has the annual meeting in May and at least three other meetings.
In a year of ordinary elections the page says when the councillors elected take office and the last day the annual meeting can be held.
An extraordinary meeting records who called it. Where two councillors called it themselves, it records the day the requisition went to the chairman and what became of it.
The business a requisition asked for is on that meeting's agenda in the councillors' own words.
The annual meeting of the parish has its own page and its own notice deadline. It is kept off the council's calendar.
A meeting whose minutes are signed cannot be moved. Neither can the meeting that approved them.
A meeting the council has been summoned to can only be cancelled. It keeps its agenda and its record.

Notice and summons

We work out the last day the public notice can go up and the summons can go out. We count clear days and leave out Sundays and the bank holiday breaks.
A card on Today counts the days down to that date and says what you have not recorded yet.
The notice and the summons are kept apart everywhere.
Every meeting has a notice and summons page carrying both documents and a place to record the day you displayed the notice and the day you sent the summons.
Where two councillors called the meeting, the notice goes out in their names.
The summons goes as one email. You are in To and the members who agreed to take it by email are in BCC.
The summons is attached as a PDF certified by you as proper officer. Your own papers can go with it. You can change any of the email before it goes.
The page names the members the email will reach and the members you have to serve yourself. It gives the reason for each one.
Sending it records the summons as sent that day. The members on paper stay named beside it for you to serve.
Recording the summons closes that agenda. From then on the meeting's business is what your members were summoned to.

The agenda

Each agenda is built on a page of its own. It holds the wording, the order, what the public may hear and the box for adding an item.
After a change, the page stays on the item you changed and says what changed.
An item can be closed to the public on any of four grounds. The ground you pick is carried into the exclusion resolution and the minute.
Business for a later meeting is written down for a future agenda. It waits on your list until you put it on one.
An item a signed minute records cannot be taken off the agenda it was on.
The year-end return and the annual risk assessment are offered on the meeting they belong to.
Where a seat is vacant and the time to ask for an election has run, the page for the first meeting that can co-opt says so.

The meeting

A meeting's page opens with the date the notice and the summons are due by. Below it is a short list of what is still to do, and each line links to the page that does it.
The morning after, the same page becomes the record of what the meeting held.
On the evening of the meeting, one page records who arrives, when and how they attend. It also records who leaves or withdraws for an item.
We work out whether the meeting is quorate as the evening goes on. The page shows the sum behind the answer.
Apologies, the members of the public and anybody else in the room are recorded there too.
Who is chairing is recorded. At the annual meeting it is whoever the council elected that night.
The agenda sits on that page to be read and cannot be changed from it.

Minutes and the minute book

Minutes are drafted against the agenda one minute at a time. Each minute carries its own reference.
A resolution records the decision. Where the council asked for the vote, it records whether the motion was resolved or lost and notes any abstentions.
How every member voted is recorded where a councillor requires it. A councillor who asks only for their own vote to be noted gets a line of their own.
An action the council resolved on is carried from the minute it arose from.
Draft minutes come out stamped as drafts. The page says where publishing them within a month is best practice and where it is the law.
The minutes a meeting has to approve are named on that meeting's page. There can be more than one set.
A meeting can approve and sign its own minutes where the council cannot wait for the next one.
Before you sign, the page asks you to confirm. It shows the meeting, the approving meeting and the name you gave for whoever presided.
A signing made in error can be taken back at any time. Taking it back never changes the wording.
The minute book is the council's permanent record. While minutes stand signed, nobody can change them. A correction a later meeting resolves sits beside the original. Taking a signing back returns the minutes to draft.
Minutes taken with the public excluded come out as a confidential appendix of their own, marked on every page.

Councillors

The roster lists the council's members, the office each holds and their term.
The chairman and the vice-chairman are recorded on the member's own row. Nobody is offered both.
A new member has 28 days to notify their interests to the monitoring officer. We count them on the roster and on Today until you record the day they told you.
The roster says which members get the next summons by email and which on paper. It gives the reason for each.
Quorum is counted against the seats on the council. A vacancy never lowers it.
Ending a term leaves a casual vacancy. You get the notice to display and the last day an election can be asked for.
A former councillor's home and email address are cleared the night after their term ends. The record of who sat on the council and who was in the room stays.

Planning

We search the register you named while you are building an agenda. Anything it finds can still go on that agenda.
Applications are sorted into those inside your parish boundary, those near it and those that could not be placed.
Where the register states a closing date for comments, it is shown. Where it states none, the page says so.
You can record the date on the authority's letter instead. We count 21 days from it including weekends and bank holidays. You are warned when the window closes before your next meeting.
Each application shows what your council resolved about commenting between meetings.
An application goes on the first agenda your members have not yet been summoned to.
The page says what was searched and when. It also says when a search did not run.
While you build an agenda, we ask the register once a day which of your applications the authority has decided since the last check. You can also ask at any time. Each decision is listed with its date.
Decisions the council has not yet noted are offered on the agenda as one item to note. Each is noted once.
If your parish leaves the national list, the page names the release it went from. It says which facts about the parish we can still stand behind.

The annual cycle

The annual meeting of the council carries the election of the chairman. The seat is vacated and filled in the order it happens.
The year-end meeting carries the AGAR, with its parts in the order the regulations require them in.
Where the council certifies itself exempt, the Certificate of Exemption is the first part of that item.
The period for the exercise of public rights is stated with the thirty working days it has to cover.
The annual meeting of the parish is a meeting of the electors. We keep it apart from the council's meetings.

Records and compliance

Every document comes as Word to change before it goes out and as PDF to publish and send. The PDFs are tagged for screen readers.
A file's name says what it is and when it is from.
A decision you take under your council's delegation has a page for the written record the regulations require of you.
Actions between meetings are carried from resolutions. The list shows what is open, what is overdue and what is done and ready to report.
We record which account did each thing and when.
You can read that audit trail for the whole council or for one meeting.
A former councillor's details and their declaration of acceptance are deleted when their retention period ends. A job that runs every night does it even if nobody signs in.
Every page works in light and dark, in three colour themes and in Windows High Contrast. Every page is tested against WCAG 2.2 AA.
A clerk who serves more than one council sees each council's record on its own.