Publishing parish council agendas and minutes

Agendas and minutes, published on time

Agendas must be published at least three clear days before a meeting, and residents expect minutes to follow promptly afterwards. Our meetings tool lets the clerk add a meeting, attach the agenda and any supporting papers, and publish the minutes once they are approved, all from one screen.

A tidy, complete archive matters as much as getting each new meeting online. Documents are organised by committee and year automatically, so nothing gets lost as your council's history grows, and residents, auditors or a new councillor can find a past decision without asking the clerk to go digging through old files.

What goes online before a meeting

Notice of a meeting, with the agenda, needs to be given at least three clear days beforehand. Publishing the agenda on your website as well as on the noticeboard means residents can read it from home, see which items affect them and decide whether to come along. Include the date, time and place, and attach any reports or supporting papers so the discussion makes sense to someone who has not seen them.

What goes online after a meeting

Residents expect to see the minutes soon after a meeting, and the Transparency Code for smaller authorities asks councils to publish their agendas and minutes. Draft minutes can go online clearly marked as draft until the council approves them at its next meeting, and the approved version then takes their place. Keeping the dates of your next meetings on the site as well, in a meeting calendar residents can check, saves the clerk plenty of enquiries. Our guide to what a parish council website must publish covers the rest of the list.