What does the Parish Council do?
The Parish Council is the lowest tier of local government - and represents the village of Monk Fryston. The council has little power but a reasonable amount of influence. A prime example of this is planning applications. The planning authority is Selby District Council, but they give details of every planning application within the parish to the Parish Council for review and will take into account the councillors' comments when coming to a decision.
Similarly the North Yorkshire County Council is the highway authority, but it consults the parish when it's considering any road scheme, for example the placing of double yellow lines, or the implementation of a cycle path.
What's involved in being a parish councillor?
As a minimum you would be expected to attend most of the full Council meetings which are held on the first Tuesday of every month (except August) at 7:30pm in the Community Centre.
You may also get approached by villagers asking you to help them with their problems, especially in things like planning matters, but this doesn't happen very often.
What sort of people become parish councillors?
All sorts. Current Councillors have a broad spread of ages with a wide variety of backgrounds and occupations.
Am I eligible?
In order to be a parish councillor you must be aged 21 years or over and be a Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of an EU member state and you must qualify to be a parish councillor for Monk Fryston in one or more of the following ways:
· be a local government elector in the parish (ie on the electoral roll)
· owned or rented land within the parish for the last twelve months
· lived in the parish or within 4.8 kilometres (3 miles) of it for the last twelve months
· worked in the parish for the last twelve months
Many people qualify on more than one of the above grounds.
Do I have to join a political party?
No. Nor do you have to say if you are a member of a party if you are.
What about being a district councillor?
This page has dealt primarily with the parish council. We also have two district councillors, to represent us on Selby District Council. Being a district councillor is considerably more onerous than being a parish councillor - you will get a lot more documents to read, meetings happen during the day and in Selby not in Monk Fryston, and you will find you are often approached by villagers with problems. This is not to put you off, but you should be aware that it is a much greater commitment.
I'm interested - what do I do now?
The full council is elected every four years, with the next election being in May
2011 however councillors sometime resign in mid-term so there are occasional "casual"
vacancies that are usually filled by co-opting someone. The way this works is that
the parish council finds one or more people who might be suitable and then votes
to select one. It's rare that there's more than one candidate.
So if you're interested in being co-opted the next time there's a vacancy make yourself
known to the clerk, chairman or any of member of council.
