Features · Quorate.

Setting your council up

Council set-up holds everything your council is, one section to a page, each stamped Recorded or Not started, so you can stop and come back.
You find your parish by typing the first few letters of its name, and confirm the boundary we hold from its outline, its area, the district and the parishes around it before anything is saved.
You name the local planning authority whose register we search for you.
You record what your council has resolved about who may comment on a planning application when the window closes before the next meeting, and on what conditions.
You record whether the council certifies itself exempt from a limited assurance review, and 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, and the page says what is still outstanding before it can.
You record where a request for an election is sent, and 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.
What your agenda says above item 1 is your council's wording and not ours, and nothing prints there if it has adopted none.
Your insurance renewal date brings a card on Today two months before it, in time to put quotes to a meeting.

The year on the calendar

Meeting dates holds the council's calendar: one meeting at a time, or a whole year worked out from the pattern your council meets on.
A pattern we cannot honour is refused rather than turned into dates on the wrong day of the week.
A date the calendar does not have is refused in the box you typed it into, and your calendar is untouched while you fix it.
The year ahead is offered to you as the calendar you have runs down.
Checks reads your calendar council year by council year: 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, and where two councillors called it themselves, 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 keeps a page of its own, away from the council's calendar, with its own notice deadline worked out.
A meeting whose minutes are signed will not move, and neither will the meeting that approved them.
A meeting the council has been summoned to is cancelled rather than removed, and keeps its agenda and its record with it.

Notice and summons

Quorate works out the last day the public notice can go up and the summons can go out, in clear days, with Sundays and the bank holiday breaks taken out.
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, because notice that was not given properly can invalidate the meeting and a summons that fails to reach a member does not.
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 rather than yours.
The summons goes by email to the members who have agreed to take it that way, certified in your name, with the business in the body of the email rather than attached.
The page names the members the email will reach and the members you have to serve yourself, with the reason for each one.
Where every member takes it by email, sending it records that you sent it, dated the day it went.
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: the wording, the order, what the public may hear, and the box for adding an item.
Every change says what it did on the item you changed, and leaves you standing on that item.
An item can be closed to the public on any of four grounds, and the ground you pick is carried through to the exclusion resolution and into the minute.
Something that is not for the meeting in front of you is written down for the next agenda instead, and 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, not on whichever one you happen to be building.
Where a seat is vacant and the time to ask for an election has run, 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, and a short list of what is still to do, each line leading to the page that does it.
The morning after, the same page becomes the record of what the meeting held.
The evening of the meeting has a page to keep open: who arrives, when, how they attend, and who leaves or withdraws for one item.
Quorate works out whether the meeting is quorate as the evening goes on, and shows you the sum it used rather than only the answer.
Apologies, the members of the public and anybody else in the room are recorded there too.
Who is chairing is recorded, and 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, minute by minute, each carrying its own reference.
A resolution records the decision, and where the council asked for the vote, whether it was carried, lost or tied, with abstentions noted beside it.
How every member voted is recorded where a councillor requires it, and 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, and the page says where the month to publish them is best practice and where it is the law.
The minutes a meeting has to approve are named on that meeting's page, and 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.
Signing asks you once more and shows you the meeting, the approving meeting and the name you have given for whoever presided.
A signing made in error can be taken back at any time, and the wording is never altered by it.
The minute book is the council's permanent record. Nothing in it can be edited, and a correction a later meeting resolves sits beside the original rather than replacing it.
Minutes taken with the public excluded come out as a confidential appendix of their own, marked on every page.

Councillors

The roster is the council's members, the office each holds and the term behind them.
The chairman and the vice-chairman are recorded on the member's own row, and nobody is offered both.
A new member's 28 days to notify their interests to the monitoring officer are counted on the roster and on Today, and stop when you record the day they told you.
The roster says how the next summons will go out, by email and on paper, and why each member is on the list they are on.
Quorum is counted against the seats on the council, so a vacancy never lowers it.
Ending a term leaves a casual vacancy, with the notice to display and the day an election can be asked for until.
A former councillor's home and email address are cleared the night after their term ends, and the record of who sat on the council and who was in the room is untouched.

Planning

The register you named is searched while you are building an agenda, so what it finds is something you can still put on that agenda.
Applications are sorted against your parish boundary: inside it, near it, and the ones 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 rather than inventing one.
You record the date on the authority's letter instead, and the 21 days from it are counted for you, every day counting, with a warning where the window closes before your next meeting.
What your council resolved about commenting between meetings is said on the application itself, so you know who may answer it.
An application goes on the first agenda still open, never on one your members have already been summoned to.
What was searched and when is on the page, and a search that did not run says so rather than looking like a quiet morning.
If your parish leaves the national list, the page names the release it went from and says what we can and cannot stand behind.

The annual cycle

The annual meeting of the council carries the election of the chairman, with the seat 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 rather than of the council, and Quorate keeps the two apart.

Records and compliance

Every document comes as Word to change before it goes out and as PDF to publish and send, and the PDFs are tagged so a screen reader can read them.
Files are named and dated from the record, so a clerk can tell what one is without opening it.
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, showing what is open, what is overdue and what is done and ready to report.
Quorate records which account did a thing and when, so the record can answer a question years later.
A former councillor's details and their declaration of acceptance go when their retention period ends, by a job that runs every night whether anybody signs in or not.
Every page works in light and dark, in three colour themes and in Windows High Contrast, and is tested against WCAG 2.2 AA.
Your council's record is your council's. A clerk who serves more than one council sees each of them on its own.