Apologies to those of you who are not interested in the village of Shiptonthorpe but in the interests of openness, honesty and transparency I am sharing this information for the benefit of anyone who plans to attend the Parish Council meeting tonight at 7.15pm in the village hall.

In an attempt to get some facts about claims and counter claims about local issues I have written on several occasions to the people who made claims about the way the renewal of the village hall lease was being handled.

Since the beginning of May I have e mailed Edward Bowron, David Gough, Richard Waud and Victor Lambert asking them to substantiate their claims that the previous council was:

· Trying to set a commercial rate for the village hall,
· Planning to introduce rules which would be against the interests of Shiptonthorpe residents.
· Deliberately keeping the community and the Village Hall Committee in the dark
· Taking decisions in secret (even though members of the VH committee were Parish Cllrs).

Despite the new council commitment to openness and transparency none of them has replied or provided evidence to support their claims.

As no replies were forthcoming, I submitted a formal FOI earlier this week. In the absence of a clerk I sent the request to Chairman Victor Lambert who responded:

“You make an incorrect assumption that Shiptonthorpe does not have a Parish Clerk. Therefore, please direct your FOI request to the clerk as she is the person who has access to the records”.

Technically he is correct. I have written to him again requesting clarification about the status of the Parish Clerk but to date he has failed to respond. For clarity, sources have confirmed to me that the Parish Clerk has resigned, is working her notice and is currently on holiday.

To date there has been no communication from a council dedicated to openness and transparency, about the resignation of the Parish Clerk. It’s almost as if they are trying to keep it secret.

I have also asked the Council Chairman to explain why the minutes of the meeting held on 20th July 2023 make no mention of the accusations made against the Parish Clerk. Once again no response. In my opinion this is an important point because if the clerk resigned due to what happened at the meeting there is no public record of what David Gough said.