Owing to the UK’s (very likely) involvement in the European Parliamentary elections on 23 May 2019, the date of the Annual Town Meeting has had to be changed. The meeting will be postponed by one week to 30 May 2019.
If any local organisation would like to make a report or presentation to the meeting please get in touch with the Town Clerk as soon as possible.
Have you got what it takes to be a Town Councillor?
If you would like to make a difference, and be involved in shaping the future of our local community, why not step forward and apply to become a Desborough Town Councillor?
The Council has a vacancy for a Councillor (Loatland Ward) and is looking for people to put themselves forward. There is a short form to fill in and send to the Town Clerk. The form is on the website here, and is available from the Council’s office in the library building.
The closing date for the receipt of signed forms by the Town Clerk is 5 o’clock on 3 April 2019.
Meetings of the Council are held in the Library on the third Thursday of each month at 7 o’clock, except August when there’s no meeting and December when the meeting is a week earlier.
To qualify to be co-opted you must:-
If you are interested, would like more information, or an application form, please contact the Town Clerk, Graham Thomson.
Eamon Gilbey has ceased to be a member of Desborough Town Council (DTC) by reason of non-attendance at meetings over a six month period (as outlined by statute). Ordinarily the Town Council would have declared the vacancy and would move to advertise it. This allows any ten electors to requisition a poll (a by-election). If no by-election is called then DTC can seek to co-opt.
However, in the six months prior to the date of an ordinary election (originally scheduled for May 2019) there is no provision for a by-election to be held, so the Council would move straight to co-option.
The six month period referred to above began at the start of November 2018. However the Northamptonshire (Changes to Years of Elections) Order 2018 came into force in January 2019 and the consequence of this was that it moved the election date back twelve months. However, the Order was silent on the impact of this change on the six month rule as outlined above.
This situation affects all Councils named in the Order. Therefore, colleagues at the Borough Council have requested guidance on behalf of all District/Borough Councils (and by implication the Parish/Town Councils in their areas) in the North Northamptonshire area from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) which is the Government department responsible for drafting the Order referred to above. Although this was requested in mid-January, no advice has yet been received. Therefore the MHCLG has again been requested as a matter of urgency to outline what course of action should be taken by all affected Councils in Northamptonshire when a vacancy arises.
Until the advice is received from MHCLG, it is unclear whether the vacancy can be filled by election, or must be filled by co-option. Colleagues at KBC have assured DTC that they are pressing MHCLG for an urgent response to this issue so that it is clear what the correct process is and to ensure all such vacancies are filled in accordance with the law.
