Parish Council Minutes

The following pages are links to relevant sets of minutes from each year (please note that the latest draft minutes can be viewed by clicking on the tab labelled ‘Latest Draft Minutes’ at the bottom of the page).

Copies of historical paper minutes are either held by the Clerk or at the Bedford archives and available for inspection, complete with signatures.

Minutes Archive.

Minutes covering current and previous years are here.

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• Residents are not normally named in minutes as attendees or in terms of representations made unless necessary for the performance of a council’s statutory duties, functions, and contracts. Doing so creates the potential for Data Protection issues and as parishioners are not formally part of a council meeting doing so serves no purpose.
• Minutes are normally a record of decisions made and little else. They should be short and concise. They would not normally make a verbatim record of what individual Councillor had said. It is rarely necessary to record details of debate (examples of when it would be material to do so would be in evidencing that appropriate advice had been considered, or risks assessed in relation to decisions).
• The pages must be numbered and after they have been approved, signed by the Chairman. Minutes are only legal evidence after they have been signed.
• Decisions made in council meetings are immediate and do not need the minutes to be approved before they are enacted.
• Minutes of the Annual Council Meeting (some use the colloquial term “AGM”) are approved at the next meeting of the parish council, NOT a year later at the next Annual Council Meeting.
• Minutes of the Annual Meeting are not approved by a parish council, they are approved at the next Meeting, which is usually an annual event, though can be more frequent if further Meetings are called.
• Council meetings do not need to approve minutes of committees or sub-committees, they simply receive them. The committee or sub-committee approves its own minutes.