Trawden Parish Councillor dismissed after Council meetings ruled unlawful

David Storey

Trawden Parish Councillor, David Storey, has been dismissed after a recent court case ruled that Trawden Parish Council meetings were not lawful. 

The court ruling resulted in Cllr Storey missing two Council meetings in a six month period from June to December 2020.

The dismissal comes after the result of a court case in April 2021, in which another former Trawden Parish Councillor was also dismissed for non-attendance from April to October 2020. 

The law states a councillor must be dismissed if they fail to attend any Council meetings within a six month period. However, Coronavirus regulations allowed Councils to suspend this law, but Trawden Parish Council did not.

Former parish councillor, Craig McBeth, brought the legal action against Trawden Parish Council after his dismissal in October 2020, claiming email conversations, between April and October 2020, were not lawful Council meetings, as the Council had asserted, and therefore he had not missed any.

Judge Pearce agreed that email exchanges are not lawful meetings under the Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels Act (Coronavirus) 2020, but that an informal in-person socially-distanced gathering by councillors in June 2020, to sign off an Audit, was. This meant Mr McBeth had missed the only legal Council meeting from April to October 2020.

The concequences of the April court ruling meant that Trawden Parish Council had to go back and look at the attendance of councillors again, and found that Cllr D. Storey had missed two meetings in a six month period, thus requiring him to also be dismissed by law.

The Council has been running lawful Zoom meetings since December 2020.

In a statement, Trawden Parish Council said:

"Notice of Parish Council vacancies.
Trawden Forest Parish Council currently have another 2 vacancies for Councillors; one for the Trawden area and one for the Cotton Tree, Wycoller and Winewall areas.  Please see the 2 notices below.

The Council have recently had to dismiss one of the Councillors from Cotton Tree following the court comments that the way that the Parish Council held 'meetings' during the pandemic was not lawful, although business continued and public were engaged with the Council.  

David missed the October meeting and then couldn't successfully log onto the Zoom meeting in December.

As soon as the Council saw that the Court had ruled that the email correspondence could not be classed as a meeting, and it was brought to their attention that David had missed these 2 meetings, he had fallen foul of the 6 month ruling even though he was an active Councillor during the whole of the pandemic and had upheld his duties."

 

Pendle Borough Councillors, Steve Petty and Christian Wakeford were also dismissed in the summer of 2020 over similar attendance problems during the coronavirus lockdown.

Trawden Parish Council residents who wish to hold an election to replace Cllr D. Storey need to write to the Council to request one before May 25, 2021.  Email: a.waddington@trawdenparishcouncil.org.uk