New parish clerk? What to find, what's due and who to call in your first month

Most new clerks inherit a job rather than a handover. The previous clerk has left, or is leaving on Friday, and what you get is a box of folders, a laptop with a password on a sticky note, and a council that expects an agenda out for the meeting in a fortnight. This guide is the list we’d want in that first month: what to find, what’s due, and who to ring.

Find these first

Some of these will be in the box. Some will be with the chair, the bank or the old clerk. Chase the ones you can’t find straight away, because every one of them turns into a deadline.

• The minute book. The signed minutes are the council’s legal record and go back as far as the council does. Find out where the originals are kept and whether there’s a gap.
• The bank mandate and who the signatories are. You need to know who can authorise a payment before the first invoice arrives. Changing the mandate takes weeks at most banks, so start now if a signatory has left.
• The insurance policy and its renewal date. Check it covers the assets the council actually owns, especially play equipment, and that the public liability limit is what the village hall and any events need.
• Last year’s AGAR, the internal audit report and the external auditor’s letter. They tell you what the auditors already think is wrong. The annual return has to be approved by 30 June every year, so if you start in spring this is your first big deadline.
• The precept letter and this year’s budget. The billing authority’s letter confirms what the council asked for and when it’s paid (usually two halves, April and September). The budget tells you what the council thinks it’s spending it on.
• Standing orders, financial regulations and the code of conduct. If the council adopted the NALC model versions, say so in your first report; if it adopted nothing, that’s a job for the next meeting.
• The asset register and any land registry titles. Councils own more than they remember: a bus shelter, a strip of verge, half a cemetery. The asset register feeds the AGAR, so it needs to be right.
• Every login. The website, the domain registrar, the email accounts, HMRC for PAYE, the pension provider, the bank’s online service, the Scribe or Rialtas accounts software if there is any. If the website login is lost, email the supplier today; it is the thing that most often takes weeks to recover.

Work out the next three deadlines

The calendar runs the job. These are the dates that don’t move, whenever you happen to start.

• The next meeting. The agenda has to be published at least three clear days before it, signed by you as proper officer, and sent to every councillor. For a Tuesday meeting that means the previous Wednesday at the latest. Most clerks send it a week ahead. (What “three clear days” actually means.)
• The end of June. The accounts and the annual governance statement must be approved by 30 June, after the internal audit, and the notice of public rights published so that the 30 working days include the first ten working days of July. If you start in May, this is your whole first month. (The AGAR timetable.)
• The precept. The budget is usually drafted in October and November and the precept resolved in December or January, to meet the billing authority’s deadline, which is often late January. If you start in the autumn, ask the chair what has already been done. (Setting the precept.)

Then the monthly rhythm: the bank reconciliation, the payments list for the meeting, the draft minutes within a month, the notices on the board and the website. The Transparency Code sets dates for most of the published items, and the simplest way to keep them is to put every one in a calendar in your first week.

People to introduce yourself to

• The chair, obviously, but ask specifically what the council has promised residents that isn’t written down anywhere.
• Your county association of local councils. Every county has one (the ALC), affiliated to NALC. Membership gives you a legal advice line, model documents and training, and the person on the phone will have heard your question before. If the council isn’t a member, raise it at the first meeting.
• The SLCC. The Society of Local Council Clerks is the clerks’ own body. Its branch meetings are where you meet the clerk three villages over who has the same district council to deal with.
• The internal auditor. Independent of the council, appointed by it, and the person who will tell you in April what they expect to see. Ask them now.
• The district council’s elections office and monitoring officer. The first for casual vacancies and the electoral register, the second for the register of interests and code of conduct complaints.
• The bank. Ring the branch or business team and tell them you’re the new clerk. It saves a month later.

Things the last clerk kept in their head

Every council has them. Who holds the keys to the noticeboard. Which contractor cuts the churchyard and when they invoice. The resident who always comes to the public session. Which planning application the council objected to in 2019 and why it matters now. The agreement with the village hall committee that was never minuted.

You can’t know them all, so start a document called “Things to know” in your first week and add to it every time someone says “oh, didn’t anyone tell you?” It will be the most useful thing you hand to the next clerk.

Training and the General Power of Competence

Nobody expects a new clerk to know the Local Government Act 1972 by heart, but the council benefits if you work towards CiLCA, the Certificate in Local Council Administration. Apart from the knowledge, a council whose clerk holds CiLCA and has done the short training on the power (and whose councillors are at least two-thirds elected rather than co-opted) can resolve to use the General Power of Competence, which lets it do things it would otherwise need a specific legal power for; the resolution is renewed at the annual meeting after each ordinary election. Your ALC runs the courses. Ask the council to pay for them in your first report; most do without being asked twice.

And the website

You will inherit one. It will have a login nobody can find, minutes uploaded as PDFs that don’t open on a phone, and a “latest news” item from two years ago. It’s not urgent in week one, but it is where residents and the internal auditor look to see whether the council is being run properly. The Transparency Code checklist tells you what has to be on it and by when. Start there.