Extract from Sonning Common Parish Council email request.

I believe that you are the correct person to approach on this matter.

Some years ago this council had 15 members.  It then went into a period of stasis wanting to be as inactive as possible and as a result proposed that it be reduced to 12 members which was enacted. A measure of that state was that the whole parish office administration was carried out by one very part-time Clerk.

We now have the polar opposite situation wherein we have a highly active council with four very busy committees and an office that fully employs four busy staff.  We are facing ever more local initiatives and can see that members who, unlike yours, receive no remuneration for their time, are wilting under their workloads.

With the agreement of the full council under the leadership of Michael Cann, copied, we wish to obtain approval for an increase in number of members before the next election.  Ideally, we would like to revert to 15.