VIRTUAL voting records of Wellington town councillors at council meetings are set to be published.

The move follows critical comments made by town Mayor Cllr Janet Lloyd at the latest town council meeting held online last week.

Members of the council made several proposals in March, before the lockdown imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic, including a £10,000 package of measures to tackle issues that arose locally. These were subsequently approved by the full council but Cllr Lloyd was ‘distressed’ that many councillors had not expressed a view then and later in electronic votes.

She said: “What I am concerned about is the lack of response from councillors. One of our major jobs as parish and town councillors is to monitor the budget – what we spend and how we spend it.”

She said ten councillors had supported the coronavirus emergency budget but five had given no response. “A full third of the council didn’t make a comment on spending money on the Covid emergency,” she said.

Cllr Lloyd added that seven councillors had not voted on the normally contentious issue of the town’s Christmas lights with a similar level of lack of response on council insurance, mobile phones for council staff, the community warden service, the WHERE service level agreement and council accounts for February and March.

Cllr John Thorne said he shared the Mayor’s concerns but was not clear if it was the same councillors who were not voting each time or different ones. He added: “We do now publish attendance records at meetings. I wonder if we should perhaps look at the voting records of councillors as to whether they voted or not so the public can see who is being active and who isn’t.”

Deputy Mayor Cllr Mark Lithgow, like Cllr Thorne, was confident he had responded to all or nearly all requests to vote electronically. Cllr Lithgow added: “The public put us into office and they should have a right to know who is actually working, so I think we should be publishing who has voted.

“If I had my way I would publish not only if they voted but which way they voted because it is a public service. People vote to put us in these offices to look after the well-being of Wellington. I am very much in favour of having a vote register of who’s doing what.”

Cllr James Hunt felt recording voting information would add to the clerk’s workload and take time when the council was meeting physically again. He was also concerned about the large number of emails coming from the town council, plus emails from the district and county council for councillors with responsibilities on those bodies, especially at this time because of coronavirus.

And he felt voting and attendance records should not be backdated. “Those people who may have been a bit lax would have the opportunity to pick themselves up,” he said.