Minutes of the Meeting of the Finance and Personnel Committee of Drayton Parish Council
held on Tuesday 28th May 2019 in the Village Hall, Drayton, at 7.00pm.
Present:
- Pat Athawes (Chairman)
- Matthew Lowy
- Tamsin Crane
- Graham Webb
In attendance:
- Lorraine Watling (Clerk)
Public
Chris Price, the Deputy Clerk until 7.30pm
56) Apologies for absence
Cllr Shane McAleavey
57a) Declarations of Interest:
None
57b) Dispensations received by the Clerk:
None
58) The Minutes of the Meetings of 23rd April 2019:
were approved as a true record subject to the second line of minute 44 being amended to read December 2019 and the date on which the minutes were approved being amended to read 28th May 2019.
- Proposed: Matthew Lowy
- Seconded: Pat Athawes
- Resolved: Unanimously
59 Terms of Reference for the Finance and Personnel Committee:
The Committee noted that in May the full Council had approved the two recommended for amendments to the terms of reference that:
- The Committee has been delegated financial powers for routine budgeted expenditure up to £4999. This complies with section 4.1 of the Council’s Financial Regulations.
- The Committee is authorised to approve miscellaneous grants which may arise during the year up to a maximum of £2.5k after circulating them to Full Council first for comment.
ACTION The Clerk will amend and issue the revised terms of reference to all Cllrs.
60) Drayton Chronicle Payment:
The Clerk confirmed that the problem had arisen due to an error on the part of TSB bank. The letter that TSB sent to the Chronicle showed that the bank had tried to process the cheque with Unity Trust Bank using the cheque number as the sort code rather than the Unity Trust Banks actual sort code. The Committee agreed that in order to avoid further delays an on-line payment will be made to the Chronicle on the June payment run.
ACTION The Clerk will explain the situation to the Treasurer of the Drayton Chronicle and suggest that they might like to take this matter up with TSB if it tries to charge them for the nonprocessing of the Parish Council’s cheque.
61) Bank Mandate and Cash Card:
Unity Trust Bank
The update to the bank mandate can now only be done on-line so the Parish Clerk bought the lap top to the meeting. At the end of the meeting the Council used a secure Wi-Fi network and added two of the three new bank signatories, the third will be added in due course and the electronic form will then be submitted by the Clerk. It will take about 10 working days to process. After the update has been completed the former Cllrs who were bank signatories will be removed from the mandate. The Cash Card will be applied for after the bank mandate amendments have been completed.
National Savings Bank
The former PC Chairman, Richard Williams, had agreed to write to the bank and ask that in future they submit all correspondence to the Parish Clerk.
ACTION The Parish Clerk will ask for a copy of this letter in order that she can refer to it when asking the bank to issue her with the forms required to update the bank mandate.
62) Personnel Matters – Recruitment of a Projects Manager to help deliver the s106 and other Neighbourhood Plan Projects:
The Committee reviewed the previous advert and job description for the post of Projects Manager written by the Chairman/previous Clerk when this post was offered to a candidate in June 2018 and the advert for a similar position issued by Radley PC via OALC. The Clerk spoke to the Clerk of Radley PC before the meeting and confirmed the process that they had followed when seeking to fill this position. They will be interviewing the short listed candidates next week. The Committee suggested that the job advert for Drayton PC might be advertised through appropriate technical press as well as through OALC. It was suggested that the new PM could be asked to produce a brief monthly report that would be appended to the Projects Board Committee minutes.
ACTIONS AGREED:
- Cllr Crane will liaise with Cllrs Webb and Arnold and also Richard Williams to review both documents and produce a revised job description and advert. This will emphasise the need for strong project management skills to ensure that the candidate will be able to deliver projects on time, to the required specification and on budget.
- There will be an extra Finance and Personnel Committee meeting on Weds 19th June in order to progress the recruitment of the Projects Manager.
- The Deputy Clerk will be asked to book either the Cauldwell Day Centre or Village Hall for this meeting.
63) Any Other Business:
None
64) The date of the next meetings.
The next Finance and Personnel Committee meeting will take place on Wednesday 19th June 2019 at 7.00pm, venue tbc. The one after that will be held at 7pm on Monday 16th September 2019.
The meeting concluded at 8pm
Signed: Pat Athawes (Chairperson, Finance and Personnel Committee)
Date: 19th June 2018