To approve the New Charter 2011 between Herefordshire Council and Local Councils in the County.

Prior to the commencement of the discussion, the Chairman reminded Members of the need to make a declaration if they were a Parish Councillor.  Cabinet Support Member Councillor GJ Powell presented the report on the New Charter to Cabinet and the following points were made in discussion:

·         The Existing Charter outlines how parishes work together and has been in place since 2002.

·         Time to refresh the charter and a working group had been set up to do this in line with the localism agenda.

·         The Charter had been drawn up with the assistance of Herefordshire Association of Local Councils (HALC), the Market Towns Forum and Herefordshire Council.  All Parish Councils had been consulted on the Charter to ensure that no Parish Council was disadvantaged by not being a member of HALC.

·         The new charter is an important document on how to move forward working together, working in partnership to provide better services for the areas served.

·         Cabinet’s attention was drawn to the issue of Parish Council ‘quality status’ which is a quality standard that a number of parish councils had achieved, but had let elapse. It was asked that this was taken into consideration when drawing up the new charter.

·         Cabinet did not think the Charter could be enforced, rather it was a matter of encouraging all Councils, to abide by the Charter.

·         It was noted that should Herefordshire Council decide to devolve some services to local town or parish councils, there would need to be a process for performance monitoring and that clustering of services by parish councils might need to be considered.

RESOLVED:  That the New Charter 2011 be approved.