Category:The Second Case of an Absent Councillor

There is a law, which we will call the Six-month Rule, which states that if a councillor doesn't attend any meeting over a six-month period, they are automatically ejected from office.

Before 2023, it is believed that not a single member of Claygate Parish Council had fallen foul of this rule. But of the 2023 intake, one councillor—Cllr Twells—had already been obliged to relinquish his seat for this reason in January 2024. Cllr Twells had stood as a member of the Connecting Claygate faction which overtook the Parish Council in May 2023.

In 2025, a second councillor, Cllr Moon, also a member of the Connecting Claygate faction, looked set to fail to attend any council meetings over a six-month period. But then on 17th July, just before the clock was due to call it a day for him, he suddenly turned up at a Planning committee meeting. This was not a committee he was a member of; nor had he been designated as a substitute replacement for an absent councillor. So he wasn't entitled to vote at the meeting. Effectively he attended as a member of the public.

The technical question is whether attending that meeting as a member of the public resets the six-month clock back to zero. The moral question is how long he should let the Parish Council continue at 90% capacity—there are ten councillors on the Parish Council—when there are clearly several residents keen to become a councillor.

This page has been set up to provide the evidence and argument to answer the technical question:

1. It is at the Annual Meeting that the Parish Council appoints councillors to the various committees for the next 12 months. It can be seen in item 14a that Cllr Moon is not assigned to the Planning committee.
2. The minutes of the 17th July meeting of the Planning committee show the name of Cllr Moon alongside the proper members of the committee. Another non-member of the committee, Cllr French, is listed alongside the members of the public who attended.