There are times, few and far between perhaps, when you suddenly find that you might get a bunch of things that you’ve been campaigning for a long time to get. You lobby Ministers and opposition politicians and you keep at it, even if the responses aren’t at all positive. And then, something changes…

Angela Rayner’s speech to the Local Government Association Conference last week was, perhaps unexpectedly, one of those moments for the sector I now hold a leadership role in, the National Association of Local Councils (NALC). In her speech, she announced a plethora of changes which, if genuine, will give powers back to local government that have been grabbed by the centre over nearly a decade of Conservative administrations.

Multi-year funding settlements, better support for local authorities in financial difficulties, it all sounds very promising, even if the proof of the pudding might have to wait until Wednesday’s Budget.

From a town and parish council perspective, two announcements that stand out are the launch of consultations on reforms to the local government standards framework, including a proposal to allow for the suspension of members who violate codes of conduct, and proposals to allow remote participation in council meetings. These are key asks for our sector and we’ll be lobbying to ensure that we’re part of the conversation.

In a debate last June, Ros Scott, declaring her interest as NALC’s President, explained why offering the possibility of remote participation was important:

We should be making it easier and more attractive for people to get involved. We need to make performing this civic role easier, not harder. The main example of that is giving councils the flexibility to hold online and hybrid council meetings. This year marks the two-year anniversary of the Government’s call for evidence on remote council meetings, but they have yet to publish the results or take any steps to address the issue. There has been some new research from NALC: nine out of 10 local councils want flexibility to have some form of online meetings. Two-thirds of them said they would use the power for some but not all of their meetings. One-third of the respondents to that survey knew of councillors who had stood down once councils had returned to being fully in person, and one-fifth of those quoted childcare as the main reason.

NALC’s census survey of councillors shows that 40% of parish councillors are women — three times as many as in 1966. We are working really hard to get more women involved, but one of the big barriers is helping those with caring responsibilities, so the option of remote meetings would make a very big contribution to that.

It seems that, even if the then Conservative ministers weren’t listening, someone on the Labour benches was.

From the perspectives of participatory democracy and diversity, enabling more people to engage with local councillors, either as elected representatives or simply as local residents interested in how their communities are led and managed, I would suggest that Liberal Democrats should be actively encouraging these reforms, and there is an opportunity to do so.

The consultation on remote meetings and proxy voting is already underway, and I encourage anyone with an interest in local government, whether or not they are a councillor, to take part.