Life is full of actions with unintended consequences. The latest is a ruling from HM Revenue and Customs that parishes must run a PAYE system, even if there is just one employee, usually the clerk.

Clerks will no longer be self-employed and the parish, through the council, is now responsible for employer's National Insurance contributions as from April 6 this year.

In the case of Newland parish this adds an extra £1,120 to the precept (the sum of money that parishes receive from council tax). Of course, we cannot blame the clerks, as the ruling is mandatory and also affects even those over the retirement age. Apparently employee contributions cease at retirement but contributions made by the employer do not.

One assumes that the clerks will now be able to claim statutory holiday pay, redundancy when and if applicable, and that the parish will have to bear any other employer liability that arises. Apart from this extra financial burden, we should also be concerned about what lies behind this change. Is this the first step in the devolution of power to parish councils? When considering this, it is necessary to think the change through. 

If parishes are to take on more responsibilities and therefore require more money, as is inevitable, then the precepts will increase. Precepts are not capped and, theoretically, a parish can request any sum it wishes from the district council. When the district council calculates council tax the total sum requested by all parishes is included, so the precept has a direct bearing on the amount of council tax charged to taxpayers. 

However, district council grants from government are capped, so where is the increased precept to come from? It can only come from us, via the council tax, yet district councils are under pressure to maintain the present level, without increase. This financial concern is in addition to any consideration of the ability of parishes to accept further responsibilities. County and district councils have numerous professional officers to advise them and carry out the actual work (similar to civil servants and Parliament) – parishes do not.

There is another aspect that the Government may not have considered and this is the unintended consequence to which I refer above. There is a limit below which employer's liability for National Insurance does not apply. This, if I read the figures on HMRC's website correctly, is £7,072. It would therefore be in a parish council's interests to ensure that its clerk does not earn above the threshold and therefore save itself the employer's liability payment.

As HMRC has made the ruling and it is already in place, there is little we can do other than carefully observe how this plays out and what other costs the parishes (and therefore council taxpayers) are asked to bear in the coming months. Or, perhaps we should consider reducing a clerk's hours and consequent remuneration and ask parish councillors to take on some of the duties, unpaid. This is something to bear in mind and question your candidate for election to the parish council about when he or she solicits your vote.

– Dr Daphne Pearson, Tinman's Green, Redbrook.