Councillors in Marshlapton have voted to adjourn. The vote they adjourned on was the question of whether to keep adjourning votes. The chamber rose. The livestream cut to a caption reading "To Be Continued". The stream then played forty minutes of the town's Christmas light switch-on from a previous year, filmed from the ceiling.

The arrangement, now in its third year, requires that no vote be completed in the session in which it is taken. Each item is moved, seconded, debated, and then suspended at the moment division seems imminent. The casting of votes is scheduled for the following meeting, by which point a further item has been introduced and suspended in turn. No vote has been concluded since the spring of the year before last. The bins were eventually collected by a man who owned a van.

The council's streaming officer, Mrs Patrice Orme-Whistle, said the structure followed the retention guidance her department wrote and then adopted.

"People don't watch local government for the votes," Mrs Orme-Whistle said. "They watch for the will-they-won't-they. The moment you resolve an item, you've taught your audience they can leave. We resolved a parking motion in March of that first year and we lost viewers by the following week. We have never made that mistake again."

The response

Residents' groups have objected that a council which never concludes a vote is not, in a strict sense, governing. The objection was heard at the last meeting, debated with feeling, and adjourned.

A rival faction has begun attending meetings purely to appear in the livestream's comments, which run alongside the proceedings and are read aloud by the deputy mayor in a monotone. One attendee, who gave her name as Doris, said she had come to complain about the hedge situation but stayed for the season arc.

"I don't even mind that nothing passes," Doris said. "I need to know what happens with the hedge."

The hedge item is scheduled for resolution at a meeting to be announced.

What happens next

The vote on whether to continue the adjournment policy will be held at the next full meeting, where it will be adjourned. Mrs Orme-Whistle confirmed the chamber is currently three votes behind its own schedule and described this as healthy.

The council has also commissioned a Christmas special, in which all suspended items are gathered into one two-hour session with no adjournments permitted. The motion enabling the special was adjourned in September. Mrs Orme-Whistle said the special would air once the enabling motion resolves, and that she was unable to say when that would be, which she described as the point.