Parish Council Buildings and Assets: The Asset Register, Inspections and Maintenance Records

A parish or town council can own a surprising amount for a body with one part-time employee. A village hall or community centre, a sports pavilion, public toilets, bus shelters, benches, noticeboards, a war memorial, play areas, allotments, a cemetery and its walls. Each of them needs looking at, some of them need certificates, and all of them eventually need money spending on them.

The law around this is spread across accounting regulations, fire and health and safety law and the council's own standing orders. None of it is complicated on its own. What makes it hard is that the clerk changes, the councillors change, and the knowledge of what was checked, when, by whom and what was done about it tends to live in one person's inbox. This guide is about keeping that record in a form the council owns. It is written for parish and town councils in England.

Who is responsible

The council is responsible as a body. Under regulation 3 of the Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015 it must have a sound system of internal control that makes its financial and operational management effective and includes effective arrangements for managing risk. Under regulation 6 it reviews the effectiveness of that system each year and prepares an annual governance statement. For most parish councils, the members meeting as a whole consider the review and approve the statement by resolution, before the accounts are approved.

In practice the clerk, often also the responsible financial officer, keeps the records and councillors make the decisions. That division works well as long as the decisions are minuted and the records sit somewhere the next clerk can find them. Buildings and land are where it most often breaks down, because the spending is irregular, the checks run on different cycles and the paperwork arrives from contractors in every format there is.

The asset register: two jobs, one list

Most councils already keep an asset register, often a spreadsheet maintained for the year end and checked against the insurance schedule. That register answers a financial question: what does the council own, and what is it recorded at? It is worth keeping it exactly as the council's accounts and its auditor expect.

Smaller councils also have a publication duty. A parish council in England with an annual turnover not exceeding £25,000 (the higher of its gross income and its gross expenditure for the year) is covered by the Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities, which the Smaller Authorities (Transparency Requirements) (England) Regulations 2015 make binding. Among other things, a parish council covered by the code publishes details of its public land and building assets each year, no later than 1 July: a description, the location, the owner or custodian, the date of acquisition if known, the cost of acquisition (or a proxy value) and the present use.

Neither of those lists tells anyone how to look after the building. For that, each significant item needs a second set of facts:

• Where exactly it is. "Pavilion, plant room" or "recreation ground, north play area", not just "pavilion".
• Make, model and year installed. The boiler, the fire alarm panel, the play equipment and the roof covering all have a manufacturer or installer whose instructions matter when something goes wrong.
• Expected life and replacement cost. These are the two numbers that turn a list of things into a budget forecast. Use a human estimate, and leave it blank rather than guessing when nobody knows.
• Condition, and where the condition came from. "Fair" means little on its own. "Fair, per the independent play inspection report of last May" can be checked, and the next clerk can find the report.

Keep the two jobs separate in your head even if they live side by side. The accounts register is reported on; the condition record is worked from. Mixing them usually means one of them goes stale.

Which building checks the law actually sets

Councils are sold a lot of certificates. Some checks are required by law, some are required by law without a fixed interval, and some are good practice that an insurer or a hirer may ask for. Knowing which is which lets the council decide its own schedule and minute why.

• Fire risk assessment. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9, requires the responsible person for non-domestic premises to make a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment and review it regularly, in particular when there is reason to think it is no longer valid or there has been a significant change. As soon as practicable after each assessment or review, the responsible person must record it, including its findings, the measures taken or to be taken, and any group of people identified as especially at risk. That applies however few people the council employs. Work out who the responsible person is for each building, especially a hall run day to day by a separate committee or hirer. The government publishes fire safety risk assessment guidance for small and medium places of assembly, which covers village halls and community centres.
• Asbestos. Under regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, whoever is responsible for maintaining or repairing non-domestic premises, or controls them, must assess whether asbestos is or is liable to be present and, where it is, keep a written plan for managing it and give information about it to anyone liable to disturb it. Contractors will ask for the asbestos information before they drill.
• Gas. The 12-monthly landlord's gas safety check in regulation 36 of the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 applies to premises occupied for residential purposes for money. A hall or pavilion that is hired out is not residential, so that check does not apply to it as such. Where the council is an employer and the hall is a place of work under its control, regulation 35 requires gas appliances, pipework and flues to be maintained in a safe condition, and an annual service by a Gas Safe registered engineer is the usual way councils show it. If the council lets a flat or a caretaker's house for money on a lease of under seven years, a periodic tenancy or a licence, the landlord's check applies to that.
• Electrical. Where the council is an employer, the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require electrical systems to be maintained, as far as necessary and so far as is reasonably practicable, to prevent danger, but set no interval. HSE says plainly that the law does not make portable appliance testing, or doing it annually, a legal requirement, and that labels and records are not legally required either. A periodic inspection of the fixed wiring and proportionate checks of appliances are good practice; set the interval and minute it.
• Legionella. Whoever controls premises with a water system needs to assess and control the risk of legionella. HSE explains what that involves in its guidance on legionella. Halls and pavilions with showers that sit unused for weeks are the classic risk.
• Play areas, grounds and structures. Under section 2 of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 an occupier owes its visitors a duty to take reasonable care that they will be reasonably safe in using the premises. No statute sets an inspection interval for a play area, a memorial or a bus shelter. Many councils combine their own routine visual checks with a periodic inspection by an independent inspector. Whatever the council chooses, the evidence that it took reasonable care is the record: what was inspected, when, what was found and what was done.

HSE's page on village and community halls is a good one-page checklist to read alongside your own risk assessment, and it is a reminder that a hall committee made up entirely of volunteers can still have duties under health and safety law.

From inspection to a maintenance plan

An inspection report is only useful if someone acts on it. The common failure is not a missed inspection but a report filed with its recommendations unread, until the same items appear again three years later, more expensive.

Treat every recommendation as an item with an owner and a status. Some will be urgent repairs the clerk can instruct within delegated authority. Some need a decision at the next meeting. Some are replacements a few years out, and those belong in a longer maintenance plan, typically looking ten years ahead, with an estimated cost and a year against each line. When the council sets its budget and precept, that plan is what tells it whether to build an earmarked reserve for the pavilion roof or the play equipment, rather than finding the money in a single year.

The plan does not need to be sophisticated. A line per item, the year it is likely to be needed, a rough cost and the source of the estimate is enough to start. What matters is that it is reviewed at least once a year and that it lives with the asset register, so a replaced boiler updates both.

Contractors, quotes and standing orders

Every council must have standing orders for contracts. Section 135 of the Local Government Act 1972 requires a local authority, which includes a parish council, to make standing orders for contracts for the supply of goods or materials or the execution of works, including provision for securing competition and for how tenders are invited. They may exempt contracts below a value the standing orders set. The council's financial regulations usually add the detail: how many quotes at which value, who may accept them, and when the decision goes to a meeting.

Contracts below the main procurement thresholds can still bring duties under the Procurement Act 2023 once their estimated value reaches the lower figure set in section 87. For such a contract, a contracting authority advertising for tenders must first publish a below-threshold tender notice, unless it approaches only suppliers it has already selected, and must publish a contract details notice as soon as reasonably practicable after entering into it. Contracts above the main thresholds fall under other parts of the Act. Whether a particular contract is caught is a question for the council's own guidance and advisers.

The record that shows the council followed its own rules is short:

• what was asked for, and the specification each contractor priced;
• the quotes received, including the ones not chosen;
• who decided, under which authority, and the minute reference where a meeting decided;
• any notice the council published about the contract;
• the order or instruction sent;
• evidence the work was done and checked, before the invoice was paid;
• any certificate the work produced, filed against the asset it relates to.

Section 135 also says that a contractor need not check whether the council complied with its standing orders, and that non-compliance does not invalidate the contract. The protection standing orders give is to the council and its residents, not the other way round, which is why the evidence has to be kept by the council.

Evidence for the year end

The annual governance statement must be prepared in accordance with proper practices, and the internal auditor tests the arrangements behind it. For buildings and land, that usually means being able to show, without a search through old emails:

• an asset register that is up to date at the year end and agrees with the insurance schedule;
• the current fire risk assessment record for each building and what was done about its actions;
• inspection reports for play areas and buildings, and the follow-up on each recommendation;
• for each significant job, the quotes, the decision and the invoice, joined together;
• the budget for buildings and the spend against it;
• the minutes in which the council made the decisions, including its review of risk.

None of that is new work. It is the record of work the council already does, kept so that each piece can be found from the others. A council that can open the pavilion and see its assets, its last inspection, its open actions, its jobs and its spend in one place answers most audit questions in minutes.

A clerk's year for buildings

Your months will follow your own meeting cycle and financial year. A typical pattern looks like this:

1. Spring, before the year end. Update the asset register, compare it with the insurance schedule, and gather the year's inspection reports and certificates. Check which recommendations are still open.
2. After the year end. Report on buildings and risk for the annual review of internal control. Where the transparency code applies, publish the land and buildings list by 1 July.
3. Summer. Inspections of play areas and grounds, routine servicing, and outdoor works while the weather allows.
4. Autumn and winter. Review the ten-year plan, get indicative prices for next year's larger items, and take both into the budget and precept discussion.

Make the record outlive the role

The council is permanent; its clerk and councillors are not. Most of the risk in looking after council buildings comes from that gap: the boiler warranty nobody can find, the fire risk assessment last reviewed by a previous clerk, the play inspector's recommendation that was never put to a meeting. A spreadsheet and a shared drive can work, but only if someone keeps every piece joined up.

Marklet for parish and town councils keeps that record in one place. It holds an asset register for each building (location, make and model, year installed, expected life, replacement cost and condition, with the survey the condition came from), records inspections and building checks on the schedule you set with what is due and overdue on the calendar, and turns an inspection's recommendations into works orders or items in the ten-year plan. Contractors get a link to the job, quotes are compared side by side and the sign-off stays with the order. The year's budget is tracked against spend, alongside Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent, and meetings, agendas, minutes and resolutions are kept in the same place. Councillors can be given read access to the works and the grants while the clerk keeps the record up to date.

Marklet records; the council decides. Its asset register is a record of condition and upkeep, not the fixed asset register in your accounts, it does not prepare your annual return, and using it does not satisfy an audit, a return or an inspection.

References

• Accounts and Audit Regulations 2015, regulation 3 and regulation 6
• Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities and the Smaller Authorities (Transparency Requirements) (England) Regulations 2015
• Local Government Act 1972, section 135 and section 270 (meaning of local authority)
• Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, article 9 and Fire safety risk assessment: small and medium places of assembly
• Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, regulation 4
• Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, regulation 36
• HSE, Portable appliance testing FAQs, HSE, Legionnaires' disease: what you must do and HSE, Village and community halls
• Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, section 2

This article describes the law of England as at 4 October 2026. It is general information for parish and town council clerks and councillors, not legal advice for your council.