Serving the summons: post by default, email by consent

Publishing the agenda and summoning the councillors are two different legal acts with two different rules, and only one of them can be done by email. Most councils email the agenda to members and assume that is service. It can be - but only on conditions, and only for councillors who have agreed to it.

England; general guidance rather than legal advice.

What has to happen, and by when

Three clear days at least before a meeting, two things must go out. The public notice is one (Schedule 12, paragraph 10(2)(a)). The summons is the other, and it is the one this page is about:

"a summons to attend the meeting, specifying the business proposed to be transacted at the meeting and certified by the proper officer of the council, shall be sent to every member of the council by an appropriate method."

• LGA 1972, Schedule 12, paragraph 10(2)(b)

"An appropriate method" is then defined exhaustively, and this is the provision to know by heart:

"(2A) In sub-paragraph (2)— ... (b) the reference to sending the summons to a member by an appropriate method is to— (i) leaving it at, or sending it by post to, the member's usual place of residence, or (ii) where the member has given consent for the summons to be transmitted in electronic form to a particular electronic address (and consent has not been withdrawn), sending it in electronic form to that address."

• LGA 1972, Schedule 12, paragraph 10(2A)

Both of those were put there by the Local Government (Electronic Communications) (England) Order 2015 (SI 2015/5), in force 30 January 2015. Before that, email service was not lawful at all, however convenient. If a council's standing orders predate 2015 and still say the summons is posted, that is why.

There are two methods, and no third.

The default: the usual place of residence

Absent consent, the summons is left at or posted to the member's usual place of residence. Not their work address, nor a PO box, nor something handed over at the end of the previous meeting.

"Leaving it at" is the useful half of that method. It means delivering it to the residence, so the clerk putting it through the letterbox is squarely compliant. For a councillor who wants paper and would rather not rely on the post, that is the answer - not collection from the office.

And note what a parish councillor cannot do. When the 2015 Order made the same change for principal councils, it gave their members three options: usual place of residence, a different postal address the member specifies, or a consented electronic address (Schedule 12, paragraph 4(1B)). The parish council version has only two. A district councillor can ask for papers to go to a second home or an office; a parish councillor cannot. It is the usual place of residence or a consented email address, and nothing else.

Can a councillor collect it from the office instead?

On a strict reading, no - and the councillor's agreement does not change that.

Paragraph 10(2A)(b) is a closed definition: "the reference to sending the summons to a member by an appropriate method is to" the two methods, not "includes" them. Collection is neither leaving it at or posting it to the usual place of residence, nor electronic transmission to a consented address. Notice too where the member's agency sits in the scheme - consent appears only in method (ii). The one election a parish councillor can make is to consent to electronic service, or to withdraw that consent. Nothing makes a member's agreement capable of validating some third method.

The comparison with principal councils sharpens it. The same 2015 Order gave their members an express power to nominate a different postal address. Parliament legislated about destinations for the summons, and gave parish councillors the narrower scheme. If a specified alternative postal address is not available to a parish councillor, collection is not either.

There is a counter-argument, and it deserves stating rather than dismissing. LGA 1972, s.233 applies to "any notice, order or other document required or authorised by or under any enactment to be given to or served on any person by or on behalf of a local authority or by an officer of a local authority", and s.233(2) permits service "by delivering it to him". Section 233(10) then provides that its methods are "in addition to the methods which are available under any other enactment" - subject to any provision of any enactment or instrument excluding them. So if s.233 reaches the summons, personal delivery would be available on top of the two methods in Schedule 12.

We do not think it rescues collection, for three reasons:

• Paragraph 10(2A)(b) exhaustively defines what an appropriate method is for this document, which reads as a provision excluding the general methods for it.
• If s.233(5) already let a recipient nominate another address, the 2015 Order's express power for principal council members to do exactly that achieved nothing. The Schedule 12 scheme reads as self-contained.
• Even on the s.233 route, "delivering it to him" is the council delivering to the member. A member coming to fetch it is not the council delivering anything; collection inverts where the obligation sits.

That is our reading, and there is no authority on it. A council that has run a collection arrangement for years should not panic - but it should change it, and the change is easy.

What to do instead. Hand-deliver to the usual place of residence, or take consent for email. And nothing stops a councillor also collecting a copy from the office whenever they like. What collection cannot do is replace service.

Keep it in proportion. Paragraph 10(3), below, means want of service does not affect the validity of the meeting, so nothing gets unpicked over this. But the duty is still unperformed, and we would resist the idea that a councillor can simply waive it: the summons specifies the business that may lawfully be transacted, so it does a job beyond the individual member's convenience.

Email: three things have to be true

Paragraph 10(2A)(b)(ii) is drafted as a set of conditions, and all of them have to hold at the moment you press send:

1. The member has given consent for the summons to be transmitted in electronic form. Consent to receive general council emails is not consent to service of the summons. It has to be consent to this.
2. Consent identifies a particular electronic address. Not "email is fine" - a named address. If a councillor changes their email, the old consent does not follow them to the new one.
3. Consent has not been withdrawn. Those five words are what makes this reversible, and they are doing real work. The moment consent is withdrawn, electronic transmission stops being an appropriate method, and anything sent that way afterwards is not service at all.

Nothing in the paragraph requires consent to be in writing. That is not a reason to take it verbally.

Record it, because you may have to prove it

The statute says nothing about keeping records of consent. It does not have to: the duty is to serve by an appropriate method, and if you are ever asked whether you did, the only way to answer is to show the consent you were relying on.

What is worth holding for each councillor:

• that they consented to service of the summons by electronic means, and the date;
• the exact address consented to;
• any change of address, treated as a fresh consent rather than an amendment;
• any withdrawal, and the date it took effect.

Collect it once, at the start of each term, alongside the declaration of acceptance of office and the register of interests. Re-confirm it after an election, because consent attaches to the member, and a new member has given none.

Be ready to go back to post

A councillor can withdraw consent at any time, for any reason or none. The paragraph gives the council no discretion to refuse, no notice period to insist on, and no mechanism to make them justify it.

So a council relying on email service needs to be able to revert for one member without disrupting everyone else - which in practice means knowing, before the need arises, who would be posted to and whether anyone in the office can actually produce and post a paper summons within the deadline. A council that has not printed an agenda in six years may find that harder than it sounds.

Treat withdrawal as effective immediately unless the councillor says otherwise, and confirm it back to them in writing so the date is not in dispute.

The public notice cannot go electronic

This is the distinction councils most often collapse. The 2015 Order changed how the summons is served. It did not touch paragraph 10(2)(a), which still requires notice of the time and place to be

"fixed in some conspicuous place in the parish"

That is a physical act, on a physical noticeboard, and no amount of consent from anybody makes a website a substitute for it in England. Publishing the agenda online is good practice, and for some councils a duty under other provisions - see what parish councils must publish - but it is not the paragraph 10(2)(a) notice.

Committees have no statutory summons at all

Paragraph 44 of Schedule 12 extends paragraphs 39 to 43 to committees and sub-committees. It does not extend paragraph 10. So there is no statutory requirement to summon the members of a committee, and no statutory rule about how it would be done if there were. The sector's guidance says the same: a committee summons is recommended but not required by legislation.

That makes it a standing orders matter, and the method is whatever the council's standing orders say. Most councils simply mirror the council rules, which is sensible - but do check that they actually say so, because for committees it is the council's own rule doing the work rather than the Act. See committees, sub-committees and working groups.

If service goes wrong

"Want of service of any such summons as is referred to in sub-paragraph (2)(b) above on any member of the parish council concerned shall not affect the validity of the meeting."

• LGA 1972, Schedule 12, paragraph 10(3)

A missed summons does not invalidate the meeting or the decisions taken at it. That is a sensible saving, and it is not a licence. It protects the council from a technical challenge; it does not answer a councillor who was shut out of a decision, and it says nothing about the separate rule that business must be specified in the summons - which is why nothing not on the agenda can be decided. See decisions not on the agenda.

Two wrinkles worth knowing

"Certified" or "authenticated"? Paragraph 10(2)(b) requires the summons to be "certified by the proper officer". The definition inserted immediately below it, in paragraph 10(2A)(a), defines "authenticated" as "signed or otherwise authenticated in such manner as the proper officer thinks fit" - a word which, after the 2015 amendment, appears nowhere in paragraph 10(2). Compare the principal-council version the same Order inserted, which uses "authenticated" in both places. It looks like a drafting slip in the parish version, and the sensible reading is that the proper officer may sign or otherwise authenticate as they think fit, exactly as for a principal council. Nobody seriously argues a parish summons needs a wet signature when the district equivalent expressly does not - but that is a reading, and there is no authority on it.

Does a link count as sending the summons? Paragraph 10(2A)(b)(ii) requires the summons to be sent "in electronic form to that address". An email which says the agenda has been published and gives a link arguably does not send the summons - it sends a pointer to it. We have found no authority either way, and emailing links is close to universal practice, so this is not a reason to panic. But where a councillor has consented to electronic service, attaching the summons and agenda to the email removes the question entirely, and costs nothing.

Getting it right in practice

• Put the two methods in the council's standing orders, in the Act's own words.
• Collect consent in writing, per councillor, naming the address.
• Keep a single list of who is served how, and review it after every election and every co-option.
• Attach the papers rather than only linking to them.
• Keep the physical noticeboard notice going regardless.
• For committees, say in standing orders what the council does, because the Act does not.

How CouncilPapers handles this

In CouncilPapers each councillor carries a notification preference, set by the clerk against their profile: no notification, a notification email with links, an email with the agenda PDF attached, or printed. Committing an agenda takes you to the notification page with that committee's members already selected, and the preference decides what each person actually receives, so the "who gets post and who gets email" list is held per councillor rather than in the clerk's memory. The Printed option exists precisely so that a councillor who has not consented to electronic service - or who has withdrawn consent - stays visible as someone who needs a paper copy.

Two things to be deliberate about, given the law above. Attached to an Email transmits the agenda itself; Notification by Email sends links. For a councillor relying on electronic service, the attachment is the safer setting. And No Notification means exactly that: a councillor set to it receives nothing however the recipient list is drawn, so it should only ever be used for someone you are serving physically.

The help centre covers councillor notifications and committing an agenda.

Last reviewed 1 October 2026. General guidance for councils in England, not legal advice.