TAVISTOCK businesswoman Trudy Eperon has topped the charts for attendances at town council meetings with a 100 per cent record.

But, just to demonstrate statistics can be misleading, Cllr Eperon’s attendance record is based on just three meetings when she was co-opted recently after a vacancy came up. After her co-option, she attended all of them.

A glance at attendance figures for the civic year running from last May reveals former mayor Cllr Anne Johnson, who served two concurrent terms because of the Covid pandemic, is leading the way when it comes to turning up for meetings.

From a total of nine possible council meetings during the 12-month period, Cllr Johnson was present at eight of them.

And from eight budget and policy committee sessions during the same period, Cllr Johnson went to all of them, giving her an overall percentage for attending council meetings of 94.12 per cent.

Not far behind, in third place, is Cllr Paul Ward, the chairman of the development management and licensing committee, which deals with - among other things - planning matters.

When it came to council meetings, Cllr Ward attended all nine and, impressively, all 17 sessions of his own committee, plus two other meetings out of four of a consultative nature, giving him a percentage of 93.33 per cent. The figures do not include meetings attended by town mayor Andy Hutton or deputy Cllr Ursula Mann ‘ex officio’ in their civic roles. If they did, Cllr Mann would be second in the table with a 94.44 per cent record.

At the foot is Cllr Tony Fey with 34.62 per cent, who still attends meetings although he moved out of the area, but still commutes to Tavistock to represent his parishioners.