Registrations of Interest - March/April 2023 Edition

Every parish and town councillor is required to disclose certain interests, including their occupation, address and any other property in the parish, and any contracts held with the council that they are a member of. The interests must be registered within 28 days of becoming a councillor and updated within 28 days of any changes. Failure to do so is a criminal offence (although in England in the past decade there has only been one criminal prosecution).

The Register of Members’ Interests (ROMI) is a public document and should be readily and freely available to anyone who wants to inspect it. Provisions for redacting sensitive interests do exist, but the bar is necessarily high. Remember that a councillor is a holder of public office and should expect to be open and accessible.

A parish or town council’s web site should have an up-to-date list of the councillors, and each councillor’s ROMI should be linked to from that page. The link might be to a PDF document served from the parish or town council’s web site, or it could be a link to the relevant page or section on the unitary council’s web site. It is the Monitoring Officer (MO) at the relevant unitary council who is

responsible for maintaining the register, so their team will receive new registers and updates (either sent directly by the councillor or sent via the clerk) and will update the register accordingly. The register held by the unitary council is the official register, so it is best practice to link to it rather than to a locally held copy.

The form for councillors in West Northamptonshire can be found at: https://bit.ly/435HPOi and once completed should be returned by email to democraticservices@westnorthants.gov.uk.

The form for councillors in North Northamptonshire can be found at: https://bit.ly/3U5o6dl and is completed and submitted online.

The parish or town council’s clerk might assist, but it is each councillor’s responsibility to make sure their register is up to date and complete.