ANDOVER Town Council has voted to give its clerk “delegated authority” should another situation such as the Covid-19 pandemic arise in the coming year.

At a full council meeting last month, members discussed permitting the town clerk to carry out a list of duties relating to the legal, financial and organisational obligations of the council, in exceptional circumstances.

This is to allow the authority to continue to function “in extremis”, by allowing the clerk to act on behalf of the council in a number of ways.

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Explaining the proposal, town mayor Cllr Barbara Long said: “If emergency situations come in and the council cannot meet, and there is no delegated authority, then we do not have the facility to get the delegated authority. So it’s there in case.”

However “reservations” were raised by Cllr Luigi Gregori, and then echoed by Cllr David Coole who said: “Every year this council is supposed to approve a scheme of delegations to the town clerk and it fails to do that. Whether we need one in extremis, I don’t think we do.”

The mayor pointed out that in 2020 there was legislation from the government which allowed decision-making meetings via Zoom, which allowed for certain amount of functioning without the delegations being in place.

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Cllr Rebecca Meye saidr: “If that happened last time, why would we not think that would happen again?”

Cllr Long responded by saying that, last time, there was a delay of several months, and that the government could have extended the town council’s ability to meet via Zoom to cover subsequent variants, as they did for county and borough councils, but they did not.

Cllr Gregori added: “We do need to pass something, if for example Omicron+ comes along”.

Cllr R Hughes proposes an amendment to the original proposal, that the document of delegated authority be reviewed every 12 months.

This amendment passed by six votes to four with two abstentions.

The amended document was then approved by eight votes to three, with one abstention.

For the full document with list of agreed delegated powers, visit: https://bit.ly/3JzwEmc.

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