IT HAS taken over nine months for council officers to reach the position of putting draft parishing proposals on the Cabinet table.

Yet when members vote next week they will be setting in motion a timetable which would require parish councils to go from non-existent to fully operational in just ten weeks.

Following approval by Cabinet and then the scrutiny committee, the proposals will go out for a further consultation period to last until the end of September.

The final proposals will then be published towards the end of the year but it won’t be until the full council meets on January 26 that the formal order will be made and shadow parish councils can be established.

By the following month they will be expected to have met, considered the services they will take on, determined how much those services will cost and then set a precept to be put before the February meeting of the full council.

By April, they will need to have recruited staff, determined an operating budget for the year, tendered for services and signed contracts.

Initially the new parish councils will be manned, not by specifically elected representatives, but by borough councillors from the wards that make up those parishes.

They will take the initial decisions and oversee the running of the parish councils – should borough councillors refuse to take up their positions for any reason then the borough would appoint people to fill their seats.

It is anticipated that each of the new councils will have in the region of 15 councillors.

The councils will remain in ‘shadow’ form under the stewardship of borough councillors until elections are held and the public can vote in parish councillors.

No firm decision has been made on when those elections will take place but as there are no borough council elections in 2017, it could be May 2018 before they are held.

  • THE council is also to spend £15,000 on a leaflet explaining parishing to people across Swindon.

Each household in the town will receive a copy of the leaflet in an effort to counter claims that the public haven’t been fully informed about the historic changes.

The leaflets will be funded out of the pot of transitional funding provided by the government to help the council move towards being financially self-sufficient by 2020 – it is the same pot that will be used to support libraries as they try to survive independently.