Shepton Mallet Town Council’s purpose is to ensure that Shepton Mallet, as a town, and the people within it are well-served by providing essential services, promoting community well-being, and preserving the town’s heritage while fostering a vibrant and inclusive environment for all residents. Shepton Mallet Town Council is a non political body.

Shepton Mallet Town Council works to involve all members of the community in its discussions. All decisions are made in meetings open to the public that everyone is welcome to attend and contribute to. Meeting dates, agendas, and minutes can be found here. Our offices are also open to the public, and we welcome members of the community to get in touch with us if they have anything they wish to discuss. You can find our contact details here.

You can see our Local Government Transparency Code 2015 here, which goes into more detail about where you can find certain information about Shepton Mallet Town Council.

The Town Council is a body corporate, made up of 16 individuals who volunteer to be Councillors and are elected by the public every four years. The current council is made up of a range of individuals, all of whom live in Shepton Mallet. Most work full-time in their day jobs, some are retired, some own small businesses in Shepton Mallet and surrounding areas, and some have children at primary or secondary schools in Shepton Mallet.

Councillors serve voluntarily and are not paid for their time, often balancing their duties with full-time jobs. While they are entitled to receive a small allowance (around £600 a year) the current Council has resolved not to make this available. The Chair can claim an additional allowance for their responsibilities.

Anyone can be a parish Councillor in England if they are at least 18 years old, a British, Commonwealth, Irish, or EU citizen, and have a strong local connection, such as being a registered elector, living, working, or owning property in the parish for the past 12 months.

The current Councillors are listed here.

Staff

The Council also employs 7 office staff members and 3 town rangers who are responsible for delivering the Council’s objectives day to day. The Clerk, Operations Manager, Projects Manager and the three Town Rangers are full-time, while the remaining 3 office staff members work part-time.

The Clerk is responsible for managing the team, as well as ensuring the council is operating efficiently and lawfully and that all processes and decisions are legal.

The three Town Rangers are responsible for maintaining our green spaces, allotments and toilets that we own, they also complement the work that Somerset Council does to keep the town clean and tidy.

The councillors are active members of the community and take an interest in the values and opinions of the town. They use this to inform their decisions on what and how the Council will operate. Each councillor can choose to be on a number of committees depending on their interests.

The Committees meet every five weeks to make decisions about what they want to work towards and do in their area. You can find more information about each of the committee’s and what they cover here.

All 16 councillor’s also meet in a full Town Council meeting every five weeks. All meeting agendas and minutes are available on our website and meetings are open for members of the public to attend and are encouraged to do so.

Once the Council has agreed on an action, the staff team then delivers the project to the community.

Here is an example of how this can work in practice:

  • Councillors learn from members of the community that many would like better play equipment in Collett Park.
  • They bring the idea to the Recreation, Amenities, and Environment Committee which decides to consult further with the public on whether new play equipment is wanted.
  • The staff team conducts a consultation asking the public what they want to see in the park
  • The consultation results are presented to the council which uses the evidence to decide to build new play equipment in the park.
  • The staff team calculates the cost, and the council agrees on an amount to be added to the budget for the project. The staff also pursue other funding avenues, such as grants. More information about how the council is funded is detailed below.
  • The staff team then delivers the project. If suppliers or contractors are needed the Council considers their ability to do the job, cost, environmental factors, and support for local businesses to decide who they will use.
  • The council is subject to strict financial regulations, if the project costs more than £25,000 it is subject to the full tender process (more info can be found here.)

  • We support community groups through our own grants schemes and offer bid writing support for external grants and funds. Last year we have awarded over £80,000 to groups like Citizens Advice Somerset, Shepton Mallet Library, The YMCA, Mendip Community Transport and more. Without our funding many would not be able to deliver their essential services in Shepton Mallet.
  • We run a series of free events such as Collett Park Day, Circus in the Park, Cinema in the Park, Skate Jam, and more. We also help fund other events such as the Carnival, Mid Somerset Show, the Snow Drop Festival, and more.
  • We manage 100 allotments across three sites
  • We built and own the West Shepton skate park and BMX track. (The Playing Fields themselves however are owned by Somerset Council)
  • We own and maintain Collett Park, the Market Cross, the Cenotaph, potted plants and flower beds around the town. Our Town Rangers support the work of Somerset Council to keep our town clean and tidy.
  • We encourage economic regeneration by supporting businesses to open and thrive in Shepton Mallet as well as driving tourism to the town.
  • We run the Shepton Mallet Friday Market
  • We built and run the Hello Shepton website to encourage tourism, community cohesion and economic regeneration.

Below is a map of our Assets:

We are often mistaken for Somerset Council and contacted for a range of things we do not have control over, including:

  • Bins and recycling collections or management
  • Council tax
  • Social housing or benefits
  • Setting or managing business rates
  • Births, marriages, and deaths
  • Roads or highways, street lights, or car park management
  • Schools, education, social or health care
  • Planning applications and queries

The Council’s funds are taken from a proportion of the council tax that households in Shepton Mallet pay.  Every year the council reviews what it needs to spend to deliver its projects and services for the coming year, and this amount is then taken from the proportion of the council tax.

The Council starts looking at the next financial year’s budget in September, and this is done in meetings open to the public that everyone is encouraged to attend.

Once the budget is agreed upon by the Council, it calculates the amount of precept it is levying from Somerset Council.

The council tax bill for 2025/2026 looked like this, with 13% of the overall bill going towards Shepton Town Council’s budget.

The amount that Shepton Mallet Town Council received was spent like this:

If money is not spent in the year it is budgeted for, funds specifically earmarked for a project or capital replacement are put into a reserve, the rest is put into General Reserves. The Council takes care not to allow the General Reserves to build excessively, ensuring that only money required to deliver the Council’s objectives is included in the precept demand. General Reserves are recommended to be at least one-third of the Council’s annual budget.

When Somerset Council declared itself in financial trouble many services became at risk of being cut, but they did not provide information about which services might be affected.

Shepton Mallet Town Council wanted to ensure that the community did not suffer as a result of these potential service losses, so they included in their budget a £100k pot of money that can be drawn on to support the retention of these services.

In the first few months, this was drawn on a couple of occasions including:

  • The public toilets on Commercial Road were at risk of closure and Shepton Mallet Town Council was able to take over the service quickly and ensure there was no period of closure.
  • The CCTV across Shepton Mallet was going to be turned off, and we funded its continuation to ensure the safety of the community.
  • The Shepton Mallet Friday Market was at risk at of closure and we took over the operation of the market as well as working to build the footfall and trader engagement.

Special Expenses are set entirely by Somerset Council, and a Somerset Unitary Councillor will have more direct insight into their calculation than the Clerk to the Town Council.

The Special Expenses line on the Council Tax bill is not connected in any way to the Shepton Mallet Town Council precept. It is a charge applied by Somerset Council in areas where it provides services that, in other parishes, are delivered by a local town or parish council.

In 2024, Somerset Council’s report to Full Council described Special Expenses as follows:

“Special expenses are applied when the Council provides a service in a parish (or unparished area) which is provided in other parishes by a town or parish council. The cost of this service has to be met by the Council Taxpayers of the town or parish where the Council is providing the service, so a special expense is charged to the Council Taxpayers of that parish.”