The Annual Parish Meeting - May/June 2023 Edition

Schedule 12, Part III, para 14(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 provides that “The parish meeting of a parish shall assemble annually on some day between 1st March and 1st June, both inclusive, in every year.”  It is usually called the Annual Parish Meeting, or Annual Parish Assembly, or Annual Town Meeting/Assembly.  The APM is a meeting of the local government electors in the parish, but where there is a parish or town council the APM is usually convened by the chair of the council.  Consequently, to members of the public the APM often looks and feels like a parish council meeting.  This misapprehension is further reinforced when the APM and the annual meeting of the council (when the chair is elected) are held on the same night.

Given that the APM must be held between 1 March and 1 June it might seem odd to be writing about it in this edition of eUpdate when, by definition, all APMs will already have been held.  The objective is to encourage you to reflect on whatever happened at the 2023 APM and to decide what you intend to do for the 2024 APM, because if you want to make something of it then planning (and maybe even budget) needs to be thought about by the end of the calendar year.

At the extremes there are two schools of thought.  One is that the APM is an anachronism that harks back to a time when local government electors needed to gather physically to hear about what was going on in the area, to discuss “parish affairs” and to demand “polls” on important local matters, and that consequently the APM is pointless and should be abolished.  After all, even the exulted Charles Arnold-Baker says, “Many parishes do not hold such meetings and there is no sanction for not holding such a meeting.”  The other school of thought is that the APM is a shop window for the council and for the community, and that it is a precious opportunity to build community spirit and enhance community cohesion in an age of digital (mis)information.

A typical APM a few years ago looked and felt like a council meeting, with the chair, clerk, and councillors sat at the top table, and with the audience comprising of representatives of groups and organisations in the parish who had been invited along to present their annual reports.  No one was there unless they were giving a report, no one wanted to be there, and fascinating as it might have been to hear about the Gardening Club’s July outing to Wisley, most people who were interested in that read about it at the time on the group’s Facebook page (and the 40-minute detailed report from the Gardening Club secretary was a little longer than had been requested anyway).

The options then are to knock it on the head or to make something of it.  It’s one or the other really because anything in the middle is probably doing more harm than good.

Some councils have reported success by choosing a topic of local interest and, where appropriate, having an outside speaker on it.  What is the one thing that residents are concerned about… what is exercising everyone on the community Facebook groups?  Maybe it’s about community safety, or climate change, or recycling, or a warehouse development, or whatever.  If that topic provided the theme and then there was an opportunity for residents to raise any other question, then that might make for a worthwhile evening out.

The civil parishes of Harlestone and Harlestone Manor (just north of Northampton) appear to be a centre of APM innovation.  The 2023 APM for Harlestone Manor (429 electors) had over 90 residents attend with a little help from a live band in the park, and the APM for Harlestone (344 electors) had 75 residents attend for a quiz and a fish n’ chip supper.  Whatever gets them through the door… once they’re there you have a captive audience!

Maybe put it on your agenda for June or July to think about the approach for your APM in 2024.  If the decision is to go for it, then you have time to organise something good.  If the decision is to consign it to history, then that’s one less thing on the “to do” list.