New Clerks

It can be very daunting taking over as a Clerk, particularly if you haven’t had much of a handover – which can often be the case.

I am more than happy to guide new Clerks through the early weeks and months, either in person or over the telephone or email.

To start you off, though, I have put together a list of the things that you need to do in the first instance.

Firstly, get yourself a good notebook.

The front of the book is just for all those notes you’re going to need to take down.

At the back of the book I have lots of useful information:

• the names of all my Councillors with their election / co-option dates
• the number of Councillors
• the date of the last election
• the date of the next election
• the date of the District Council and County Council elections and the names of the Councillors
• the number of electors
• and then all that useful information you need to hand such as details of email accounts, bank accounts, logins etc (but whatever you do – don’t lose it!)

After all the useful information, I then leave a page or so (for expansion of the information section) and have a record of my hours.  I have three columns – the left column is the date, the middle column is what I’m going to do (ie agenda / meeting prep, correspondence, finance, meetings etc) and then the final column is for the time started and the time finished.  When I have a moment, I then enter all that information into a spreadsheet which calculates my hours.

This list is for those within the Cherwell District of Oxfordshire, but other areas will have similar people to inform:

List of people to tell that you’re the new Clerk:

• Cherwell District Council (CDC), responsible for elections, bins, planning, street names (give the elections team – elections@cherwell-dc.gov.uk –  your details and everything else should slot into place)
• Oxfordshire County Council (OCC), responsible for highways, education, social care (Parish Council Amendments team at ParishCouncilAmendments@oxfordshire.gov.uk)
• Oxfordshire Association of Local Councils (OALC) – the go-to place for PC advice and great courses
• Community First Oxfordshire (CFO) – rural support
• Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) – well worth being a member and the PC should pay the subscription.  There is also an Oxfordshire Branch which meets in person four times a year at different locations which you’d be very welcome at and in the in between months via Zoom.
• External Auditor (currently Moore for Oxfordshire)
• Oxfordshire Playing Fields Association
• Insurance company
• The Information Commissioner

Further things to do:

• Check you’ve received your Contract
• Notify HMRC
• Banking

You need to check that the PC has agreed your appointment.

Use wording like: ‘The Council RESOLVED to agree that:…’

Appointment of you as Clerk and RFO and include number of hours per week / month agreed together with salary scale

Agree to you being a signatory on the bank account(s) as a Service Administrator with proviso that you will not sign cheques or authorise online payments (although you can set them up to be paid).