Parish Council Co-option: The Process, Notice Periods, and How to Avoid a Challenge

When a councillor resigns, dies, or is disqualified mid-term, the council has a vacancy to fill. The route is usually co-option — the council appoints a new member rather than holding an election. But co-option cannot begin until a strict statutory notice period has run, and getting the sequence wrong is one of the easiest ways for a parish council to land a procedural challenge. This guide walks through the legal sequence, the eligibility rules, and the steps that protect the council from a complaint.

First, distinguish the two types of vacancy

The process depends on why the seat is empty:

• A casual vacancy arises when a sitting councillor leaves mid-term — resignation, death, disqualification, or failure to attend any meeting for six consecutive months. The attendance ground is conditional: under section 85(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 the member ceases to be a member "unless the failure was due to some reason approved by the authority before the expiry of that period", so an absence the council approved in advance — illness, bereavement, a posting abroad — does not vacate the seat. This is the situation this guide covers.
• An unfilled seat after an election arises when not enough candidates stood. This follows a slightly different route and can usually be co-opted straight away without the notice period below.

For a casual vacancy, the council must follow the statutory notice sequence before it can co-opt.

The statutory sequence: public notice, then 14 days

The moment a casual vacancy occurs, the clock starts. The council must give public notice of the vacancy. This duty comes from section 87(2) of the Local Government Act 1972, with the notice given in the manner set out in section 232 — displayed in a conspicuous place in the parish (the noticeboard) and, in practice, on the council website.

Once public notice is given, a window opens. Under rule 5 of the Local Elections (Parishes and Communities) (England and Wales) Rules 2006, an election to fill the vacancy can be requested within 14 days (not counting certain non-working days) of the public notice, by 10 local government electors for the area in which the vacancy occurred.

If no valid request for an election is made within the 14-day window, rule 5(5) requires the council to co-opt a person to fill the vacancy "as soon as practicable" after the 14 days expire. Only at that point may co-option begin.

The six-month exception most guidance leaves out

A valid 10-elector request does not always compel a by-election, and the duty to co-opt is not always a duty. Both limbs are qualified where the vacancy falls close to the end of the term:

• Rule 5(3) — an election "must be held, if requested in accordance with paragraph (2), if the casual vacancy in the office of the parish ... councillor occurs other than within six months before the day on which that councillor would regularly have retired." A request made about a vacancy that does fall inside that six-month window therefore does not trigger a compulsory election.
• Rule 5(6) — for a vacancy occurring inside that same six-month window, rule 5(5) "shall have effect with the substitution of the word 'may' for 'must'; and any vacancy not so filled must be filled at the next ordinary election." Co-option becomes discretionary, and a seat left unfilled simply carries to the ordinary election.

This is worth getting right because a parish by-election can end up costing the council money — though not automatically, and the detail matters. Under Representation of the People Act 1983 s.36(5), a returning officer's expenditure is paid in the first instance by the district council; that expenditure "shall, if the district council so require, be repaid to that council by the council of the parish for which the election is held." So the recharge is discretionary, not automatic — it depends on whether your district council chooses to require it, and practice varies. (Where the district has fixed a scale for these costs, it pays only up to that scale.) Check your own district's position rather than assuming either way. A council told the sequence is fixed can still end up holding — and potentially paying for — an election rule 5(3) did not require.

The ordinary sequence, then, with its second branch:

1. Vacancy occurs
2. Council gives public notice (s.87(2) / s.232)
3. 14-day window for 10 electors to demand a by-election (SI 2006/3305 r.5(2))
4. Vacancy arose more than six months before the councillor would regularly have retired:
   • by-election validly demanded → election is held; co-option does not apply (r.5(3))
   • no demand → council must co-opt as soon as practicable (r.5(5))
5. Vacancy arose within six months of that date: a demand does not compel an election, co-option is discretionary ("may", not "must"), and any seat left unfilled is filled at the next ordinary election (r.5(6))

The single most common error is co-opting before the 14 days are up. A council that appoints a new member during the notice period has acted unlawfully, and the appointment can be challenged. Get the public-notice date in writing, count the 14 days, and only then agenda the co-option.

Who can be co-opted

A co-opted member must meet the same qualifications as an elected councillor and must not be disqualified. To stand, a person must be at least 18 and a qualifying citizen, and must meet at least one of the local connection criteria — being a registered local government elector for the parish, or — for the preceding 12 months — having occupied land or premises in the parish, having their principal place of work in the parish, or having resided in the parish or within three miles of it. (Only the residence limb extends to three miles; the occupation and place-of-work limbs require a connection in the parish itself — LGA 1972 s.79(1).)

A person is disqualified if they are, among other things, an employee of the council, an undischarged bankrupt, or subject to certain criminal sentences. The clerk should ask each candidate to confirm eligibility in writing before the co-option meeting. The full qualification and disqualification rules sit in the Local Government Act 1972 and the Localism Act 2011.

Running the co-option meeting

Co-option is a decision of the full council, taken at a properly convened meeting. There is no single prescribed procedure, but a defensible process looks like this:

• Advertise the co-option alongside the vacancy notice — say how to apply, the deadline, and what candidates should submit.
• Circulate applications to all councillors in advance. Many councils circulate at least three clear days before the meeting, mirroring the agenda-notice rule.
• Invite candidates to the meeting to speak briefly and answer questions. Treat every candidate the same — equal time, the same questions.
• Vote. Where more than one candidate stands, the successful candidate must secure an absolute majority of those present and voting — more than half. If no candidate achieves it on the first vote, the lowest-polling candidate drops out and the council votes again.
• Record the decision in the minutes, including the vote and the name of the person co-opted.

Conduct the vote openly. A secret ballot for co-option sits uneasily with the openness requirements for council decisions and can itself become a ground for complaint.

After co-option: the steps that make it valid

Co-option is not complete when the vote is taken. Two further steps are legally significant:

• Declaration of acceptance of office. Take a declaration of acceptance of office from the new member in the prescribed form, made in the presence of a member of the council or of the proper officer (the clerk) and delivered to the council. Do it at the council's first meeting after the co-option, before the new member does anything else. That is universal practice, it is what an auditor or a monitoring officer will look for, and it removes any argument.

  ⚠️ Be careful with what the statute actually says here, because most guidance overstates it. Section 83 of the Local Government Act 1972 is the declaration provision, and section 83(4) is the limb that covers parish councils — but it opens "A person elected to the office of chairman of a parish or community council or parish or community councillor", and its deadline is keyed to "his election". A co-opted member is not elected. Section 89(6) treats the two routes as alternatives — a casual vacancy "shall be filled by election or by the parish or community council" — rule 5(5) of the 2006 Rules says the council "must ... co-opt", and the order prescribing the declaration form prescribes it "For the purposes of section 83(1) and (4)" without deeming a co-optee to have been elected. So we do not tell you that section 83(4)'s deadline, or its automatic vacancy, bites on a co-option — that cannot be verified on the face of the legislation, and being wrong in that direction is expensive: it would mean treating an occupied seat as empty. Take the declaration at the first meeting as a matter of practice, minute when it was made, and if the point ever becomes load-bearing for a decision, put it to your principal authority's monitoring officer.

  The separate and widely-repeated rule that a new member "cannot act" until the declaration is delivered comes from section 83(1), which by its own terms applies to "the council of a county[, county borough], district or London borough". Parish councils are not in that list, so that prohibition does not reach a parish council at all.

• Register of interests. Within 28 days of becoming a member, the co-opted councillor must complete a register of interests and submit it to the monitoring officer for publication — the principal authority's monitoring officer, since a parish council does not have one of its own. This is a statutory duty under section 30(1) of the Localism Act 2011, separate from the code of conduct, and failure to register is a criminal offence.

How challenges arise — and how to avoid them

Co-options are challenged more often than clerks expect, almost always on process grounds rather than on the merits of the candidate. The recurring triggers:

• Co-opting before the 14-day window closes. The appointment is premature and unlawful.
• Defective public notice. Notice not displayed, or displayed only online and not on the noticeboard, or the dates not recorded.
• An unequal or opaque selection process. Candidates given different amounts of time, or a vote taken in secret without explanation.
• No declaration of acceptance on file. The declaration is the record that the new member accepted office. A co-option with no declaration taken, or none minuted, is hard to evidence if the appointment is questioned later.
• A disqualified person co-opted. Eligibility not checked, and a council employee or disqualified individual appointed.

The defence against all of these is documentation. Record the date of the vacancy, the date and method of public notice, the 14-day expiry, the applications received, the meeting at which co-option was decided, the vote, the declaration of acceptance, and the register of interests. A council that can produce that paper trail is very difficult to challenge.

Where co-option fits the governance picture

A casual vacancy is also a moment for the council to check its wider governance. The new member should be inducted: given the standing orders, financial regulations, and code of conduct, and pointed to training through the county association of local councils. The internal auditor will, at year-end, check that the minutes record the co-option properly — use the compliance checklist tool to confirm the co-option steps and the new member's register of interests are all in place.

Sources

• Local Government Act 1972, Section 87 — casual vacancies and public notice
• Local Government Act 1972, Section 232 — public notices
• Local Elections (Parishes and Communities) (England and Wales) Rules 2006, Rule 5 — filling of casual vacancies
• Local Government Act 1972, Section 85 — vacation of office by failure to attend meetings
• Local Government Act 1972, Section 89 — filling of casual vacancies
• Local Government Act 1972, Section 83 — declaration of acceptance of office

This article is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. Casual-vacancy procedure can be affected by local circumstances; check with your county association of local councils or monitoring officer where the position is unclear.