AS Craven District Council moves into its last months before being replaced with a new single unitary authority there could be an issue with members missing meetings, said the authority’s leader.

Cllr Richard Foster said he could not support a move to suspend the ‘six month rule’ which sees councillors being expelled from the authority if they fail to attend a meeting in six months.

Cllr Andy Solloway had asked the council to remove the rule for a temporary six months to allow members some time to get back to normal following the relaxing of coronavirus restrictions.

He told the full council the pandemic was far from over and members needed time.

But council leader Cllr Richard Foster said the authority, which will seek to exist in April, 2023, needed to make sure there were enough members to make the important decisions that still needed to be made.

He added there was still measures in place where individual councillors could seek special dispensation if they were unable to attend meetings of the council for some reason.

“We could find ourselves running out of members as we come to the end of the authority, and we do still have serious decisions to make, “ he said.

In a report to the committee, it was stated that during the coronavirus pandemic, many councillors attended meetings remotely. The temporary regulations that allowed meetings to be held in that way have now ended and so all council and committee meetings must take place in a single location with all councillors present.

“However, the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic continue to be felt and the leader of the Craven Independents Group has written to the solicitor of the council requesting that council be asked to grant to all councillors a blanket dispensation of the six-month rule.”

The motion was lost.