Borough Confirms It Will Help Run Parish Council After Mass Resignations

Published on: 18 Feb, 2021
Updated on: 20 Feb, 2021

By Martin Giles

The borough council has called an extraordinary meeting on March 5 to appoint temporary councillors for Normandy after its nine-member parish council collapsed amid acrimony.

One likely appointee is Normandy’s Conservative ward councillor David Bilbe, who has been a loggerheads with the parish council for months. Others are expected to be a cross-party selection of borough councillors.

Extract from NPC minutes of July 29 2020

Despite Normandy Parish Council’s (NPC) normal procedure not to publish minutes in draft format, minutes of the full council meeting on January 27, which seems to have triggered the river of resignations, have appeared today (February 18) on their website.

Cllr David Bilbe

Apparently, concern about Cllr Bilbe’s treatment at the meeting and the dismissal of his questions about last year’s parish audit caused some councillors to resign.

One entry in the minutes relates to a complaint against The Guildford Dragon NEWS about an article published in January. The complaint has been referred to the journalism watchdog Impress for adjudication.

Leslie Clarke, the parish clerk, says he is off sick and has declined to answer questions, including confirmation of the status of Peter Palmer, one of only two councillors still shown on the NPC website.

Another NPC minute of their July 29, 2020, meeting said:

But if he has not attended a formal NPC meeting for a period of six months and that is confirmed, automatically he would have ceased to be a councillor, which he himself thought was the case when he spoke to The Dragon earlier this month.

See also: Comment – We Must Know What Went Wrong With This Parish Council

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