How to Read a Planning Application

Richard Strevens of PSTAX on how councils can claim back VAT on new community facilities, why partial exemption is a cliff edge, and how one lease change can create a £200,000 VAT bill.

Emma Payne, Town Clerk at Stotfold Town Council, on how being kind, honest and firm took resident satisfaction from 20% to 53%, and why kindness done properly is a strategy, not the soft option.

Budget season is here. Hannah Driver, Head Accountant at Scribe, returns to take new clerks, RFOs and councillors through the whole cycle: forecasting this year, building next year's budget line by line, getting reserves right, and calculating and checking the precept.

A planning application lands, and the drawings may as well be in another language. Architect Tom Sykes returns to show councils how to read them: print them out, draw over them, imagine coming home, and learn why bad design is one of only eleven grounds in the NPPF that can lead to refusal.

Lee Jakeman has walked into councils cold and found nobody who knows the laptop password, the bank login, or whether the council is even quorate. Fifteen years a town clerk and now a locum, he shares what the first week really looks like, how to give advice that protects you, and the legacy every clerk is writing right now.

The Proper Practices are being rewritten. Claire Reed of NALC sets out what's changing — a new governance assertion, a code of practice for internal audit, and an accounts form that splits your reserves in two. A short bonus extract from Episode 16, published while the consultation is open.

The AGAR is going digital. Lance Allan of SAAA walks through the new online submission portal ahead of its 26/27 launch, and Claire Reed of NALC sets out what's changing in the Proper Practices rewrite — including the variance rules that will stop you guessing what auditors want.

Martyn's Law sounds daunting — but for most parish and town councils the response is far smaller than the panic suggests. Alex Jay of Little Green Button cuts through the jargon on who's in scope, the tiers, and what a proportionate, low-cost plan actually looks like.

Employment law's biggest shake-up in a generation is here. HR specialist James Corrigan explains what the Employment Rights Act 2025 means for parish, town and community councils — from six-month unfair dismissal rights to the rise of AI-generated tribunal claims — and the practical steps to get ahead of it.

Eleanor Greene — returning from Episode 3 — on what happens after you submit the AGAR: how to navigate external audit queries, explain variances, handle Assertion 10, and come out with a clean sign-off rather than a stressful summer.