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Parish Council Meetings
A Parish Council must meet a minimum of four times a year. Beckley and Stowood Parish Council has eleven plenary sessions a year (the council does not meet in August), and an additional meeting in May, the Council's Annual General Meeting at which the public are invited. The Council may also arrange open meeting during the year at which the public are also invited and when important matters of local concern may be discussed.
All meetings of the Parish Council are open to the Press and public, though they have no right to speak at a meeting unless the members, by resolution, agree to suspend its meeting for a few minutes to allow electors to voice opinions. This is not an opportunity for debate, however, and the public's views may or may not sway decisions.
A Parish Council is a decision-making body. As such, agendas are a list of matters on which it needs to take a decision. Normally, matters for discussion and decision have to be advised to the Clerk at least eight days before the next meeting of the Council. Councillors are 'summoned' to attend meetings by giving them at least three days clear notice, not counting the date of issue of the summons, nor that of the meeting.
Members of the public who wish particular matters to be aired should approach either the Clerk or a Councillor, so that consideration can be given to include the item on the agenda for the next meeting (or, if there is insufficient notice, the meeting after the next).
Certain matters which occasionally arise are confidential, and the Council may resolve to exclude members of the public and Press from meetings while they are discussed.
Minutes of full meetings of the Council and of its committees are kept, and are available for inspection by electors and the Press. In general, the purpose of minutes is to record decisions and not any preceding discussion. You may download copies of previous agenda's and minutes from the table below by clicking the 
icon.
In order to read the files you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader on your computer. This is available for downloading, free of charge, from the Adobe Website. Once it is installed on your machine it will automatically open to enable you to read the files. We have done this in order to keep the original text formatting and graphics in the original documents. You can also right-click on the file-name choose save-as to save the document on your computer to read off-line. |