Parish Council Documents

Kessingland Parish Council cannot do whatever it wants, the ways that councils run is determined by laws set by the UK Government which grant powers and duties dependent on the level of council.

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Along with those legal requirements council's work to a collection of national documents, these include Council Standing Orders, Council Financial Regulations and Councillor Code of Conduct.   

• Standing Orders deals with how the council is organised.  It also covers the structure of councils, how meetings are announced, run and recorded, how the  councillor code of conduct is managed, staffing, procurement, finance (summary), information management and data protection, relations with press and public etc.  Parts of Standing Orders can be amended on a council by council basis but there are sections in bold black typeface which cannot be changed.  Parish Councils adhere to the bulk of Standing Orders however most do not follow the rules of debate at meetings.  Parish and Town Council tend to work more collectively rather than on a 'for' or 'against' basis which the model Standing Orders are designed to facilitate.

• Financial Regulations deal with council finances in more depth than Standing Orders and govern how the council budget, precepts, raises revenue and spends and how it accounts and reports all the council spending on an annual basis. These are also on the Council Financial Documents page with more information.

• Code of Conduct is a set of guidelines which councillors are required to follow in office.  These have recently be subject to a national review by councils and the new version adopted by the majority of councils in England from parish to county and to more specialist councils like metropolitan councils.  The code of conduct also deals with the complaints procedure if someone feels that a councillor has not been acting in line with the code of conduct and the complaints process is not dealt with by the parish council.  Although it is not a requirement of the code, council staff generally adhere to the code however should there be any issues regarding staff then they are dealt with by the council

Aside from these overarching documents the council also have policies which it has adopted to ensure that it acts in the best interests of its community.  These will vary between the sort of policies most businesses have such as Health and Safety, Equality and Diversity, Safeguarding, etc

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Council policies, procedures and ToRs are generally adopted on an annual basis however there are several polices which have not been reviewed in a number of years and so the council has set up a Policy Working Group who will review policies during the council year to ensure that they they are fit for purpose or need amendments or re-writing.

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Underlying all the policies are issues which the council has identified as critical such as climate change and this is considered in relation to policies  but also to all council decisions.

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In regard to planning applications, the parish council is only a consultee.   As a consultee, the planning committee recommendations have to consider planning documents which can be national through to neighbourhood level.  Kessingland is fortunate to have been one of the first parishes Suffolk to adopt a Neighbourhood Plan which involved consultation across the community as well as a public referendum.  The Neighbourhood Plan has to be considered as a statutory planning document  and it also means that the village receive a higher rate of Community Infrastructure Levy. The policy which sites above the Neighbourhood Plan is the Local Plan which considers planning across the district.  There are some planning policies at county level however these are more concerned with major infrastructure projects and above all of this is the National Planning Framework.  The district council, as the planning authority also produce some supplementary planning documents to deal with specific issues such as affordability and sustainability.  These are also listed on the left however they will take you to the East Suffolk website.

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