CURRENT FIRST CITIZEN BRIAN MOSS LOOKS SET TO BE GIVEN 'EXTENSION' TO HIS TERM OF OFFICE

AN ATHERSTONE councillor may have to wait to become North Warwickshire's number one citizen.

The knock-on effects of coronavirus bringing civic duties to a standstill in mid-March is likely to impact on when Councillor Ray Jarvis becomes mayor for the 2020/21 year of office.

Tomorrow's first 'virtual' annual meeting of the borough council has to decide the way forward for outgoing civic head Brian Moss who has missed two months of duties due to the pandemic.

Council leader David Wright told Nub News he expects the Kingsbury ward councillor will be allowed to carry on in his ceremonial role.

He said: "It is likely Councillor Moss will continue his year of office into 2020/21 as coronavirus has cut short his civic duties.

"It is something that will be decided tomorrow. We are obviously looking at a number of options."

Those options at the 'virtual' meeting, which will be relayed to the district via the borough council's YouTube channel, could potentially mean Atherstone North Councillor Jarvis will have to hang fire until May 2021 before taking the traditional route from deputy mayor to mayor.

Tomorrow's scaled down agenda includes a 19-point procedural plan for regulating the meeting under the Government's Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels (Coronavirus) (Flexibility of Local Authority and Police and Crime Panel Meetings) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020 which makes provision for remote attendance at, and remote access to, council meetings.

The new regulations means the council can hold meetings without all, or any, of the members being physically present in a room.

This allows for remote meetings through electronic, digital, virtual locations, live webcast, live interactive streaming, video and

telephone conferencing. North Warwickshire's meeting will see council leader David Wright, mayor Brian Moss, chief executive Steve Maxey and representatives from the council's democratic services and IT teams stage the proceeedings from the authority's civic chamber in South Street, Atherstone. To take part in proceedings you will need to go to https://www.youtube.com/user/northwarks. Last Thursday saw the first of the 'virtual' local authority meetings at Warwickshire County Council with technology helping to restart the process of the public being able to witness decision-making by its elected representatives To overcome the problems thrown up by an absence of committee meetings through Covid-19, North Warwickshire is looking to bring in a small extension to its delegated powers already in force in relation to determining planning issues. In order to reduce the need to meet in person, it is suggested that the scheme of delegation is expanded but with more member involvement than would otherwise be the case for delegated items The recommendation suggests cases will only be reported to the planning board which the committee chairman, Labour opposition spokesman or council head of development control considers to be of significant public interest such as applications for large housing developments or significant commercial and leisure projects. In practice, delegation means chief executive Steve Maxey taking executive action on behalf of the authority in the delivery of the planning control service. It is designed to help reduce the time taken for making the more straightforward decisions on planning applications, and related matters, when they are consistent with council policy as set out in the development plan. As soon as it is obvious that the recommendation of the head of development control will be contrary to the nature of representations received on any application, then the

case officer will contact local councillors together with the committee chairman and deputy.

If no adverse comments are received within seven days, then the matter will be dealt with in line with the council officer's recommendation under delegated powers.

Meanwhile, councillors will be asked tomorrow night to ratify the appointment of solicitor Clive Tobin as the council's monitoring officer as part of the authority's proposed changes to the senior management structure.

Mr Tobin, who has represented Northampton Borough Council in a number of high-profile court cases, is due to join the North Warwickshire authority on June 8 as its head of legal services.