Warm tributes were paid to Craven District Council’s departing monitoring officer at her last council meeting.

Gill Cooper, the council’s chief legal officer responsible for member and bereavement services and a member of the council’s management team, is to join the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, where she will be its solicitor and monitoring officer.

Council chairman Coun Donny Whaites (Cons) said Mrs Cooper had always given him and other members sound advice and wished her well in her new job.

And Coun Stephen Place (Ind), chairman of audit and governance, said he had thoroughly enjoyed working with Mrs Cooper and thanked her for her support and dedication.

Mrs Cooper, who joined the council in June 2007 as its head of legal services, became its monitoring officer a few months later before being promoted to strategic manager, legal and democratic services in 2010.

She will start at the national park authority’s offices in Bainbridge on Monday.