Local Council Documents and Policies

All parish and town councils operate to the same rules and regulations, often laid down in the Local Government Act 1972. The document below is a list of documents and policies that all councils should have or consider having. If you do not have all the “must have” (red) documents, consider preparing and adopting them over time, it is not necessary to adopt them all at once. The purpose of having documents and policies is to guide the work of the council and to help it discharge its functions; they should be viewed as a help, not a hindrance. Examples of some documents can be found on the internet and/or from Northants CALC. (Helpful tip: when searching online, use quote marks to retrieve the most relevant pages. For example, if searching for example equality policies used by parish councils, search for “parish council” + “equality policy”).