Neasham Parish Council

About us

We are Neasham Parish Council (the 'Council'). We have set out what we do on the 'About' page of our web-site. We are committed to providing a quality service in everything we do, for the benefit of the people who live or work in our area or are visitors to the locality.

You can influence what we do or how we do it by contacting the Clerk, the Chair, or any Parish Councillor and to ask them to raise a matter at a forthcoming meeting of the Parish Council. You will need to do this at least a couple of weeks before each scheduled meeting, to enable the Clerk to place it on the published agenda. If you want to comment on an item which appears on the published agenda, you should make contact before the meeting – once a decision is made it is too late because there are strict rules in our Standing Orders limiting our ability to re-open matters.

You can also attend a Parish Council Meeting, and, with the permission of the Chair, may speak at it. We require you to give the Clerk at least two clear days' notice of wishing to speak, and the topic you wish to speak about.

Complaints

We want you to be happy with what we do, but we know it's difficult to get it right all the time. Our policy is to respond to and investigate all complaints made about our standards of service in carrying out our functions. You should normally make your complaint to the Clerk in the first instance in person, by phone, or by e-mail or letter. The Clerk may be able to resolve your complaint immediately, but if not will normally try to acknowledge your complaint within five working days and put in hand our Complaints Procedure. A copy of this is available from the Clerk on request. We will try our best to resolve your complaint within four weeks, but let you know if this turns out not to be possible.

If your complaint concerns a Freedom of Information Act request or the Model Publication Scheme information this should be addressed to the Clerk and will be dealt with in according to statutory requirements or Information Commissioner's Office guidelines. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

If your complaint concerns the Clerk, then your complaint should be made direct to the Chair.

Defects

If your 'complaint' is not really a complaint, but you want to report a defect in some public space, road, or highway or a structure adjacent to the highway, please report this to the Clerk. You can do this by telephone, e-mail, or using our contact form. We will either deal with it, if it is our responsibility, or pass it on to the relevant Authority.

Complaints which we won't deal with

Any complaint against a Parish Councillor needs to be referred to the Standards Committee of Darlington Borough Council. You should contact the Monitoring Officer. 

If you wish to complain about a matter which is outside the scope of our work, we will try to let you know which body your complaint should be made to.

Complaints which our employee wishes to make about us will be dealt with under our Disciplinary and Grievance procedures.

This Policy was approved by Neasham Parish Council on 1 March 2021.

2021/03