When lockdown hit us we all turned to Zoom or one of its online rivals to maintain our working and social lives. Local Councils worked out ways of carrying out essential business online, and that included formal Council meetings, although it did require emergency government legislation. In fact, all levels of Government, from Westminster to Parish Councils, met online, or held hybrid (mixed virtual and in-person) meetings, during the pandemic.

The House of Commons adopted hybrid meetings as soon as the technologies for viewing and voting were in place.

In May 2021 Councils were told the emergency legislation no longer applied and that they had to return to fully in-person meetings. This did cause concern for a number of reasons. Social distancing was still in place, and many Council chambers were not large enough to hold all the councillors and officers seated 2 metres apart. Also, some councillors were clinically vulnerable and were still shielding, or were doing so to protect a family member. Not surprisingly, there were many calls for hybrid meetings so people who needed to stay away could participate remotely.

Even Jackie Weaver, of Handforth Parish Council fame, said that it was a dreadful idea to end virtual meetings.

There was also some anger that the Commons continued to hold hybrid meetings for several more months after Councils were forced to stop them.

The Local Government Association has been campaigning for hybrid and virtual meetings ever since. There was evidence that virtual and hybrid meetings had widened participation by both councillors and the public, whereas fully in-person meetings had reduced it.

Over a year ago the BBC reported that councillors in 10% of councils were standing down because of the inflexibility.  Reasons cited included disability, illness and caring duties. We should also mention County Councils and large rural District Councils where travelling to meetings can be very time consuming.

The issue has not gone away. This week a Lib Dem councillor, Jennie Jagger, got the unanimous backing of Worcester Council to call for options for remote participation in Council meetings. In Jennie’s case she is pregnant and concerned about how she will manage with a young baby, but she points out that a flexible approach will allow people with disabilities or full-time jobs to participate as well as those with caring responsibilities.

Now one of the Lib Dem Voice team, Mark Valladares, is Chair of the Micro Councils Network of the National Association of Local Councils, and says:

One of the key asks for our organisation, representing approximately 10,000 Town and Parish Councils and 100,000 volunteer councillors across England, is the ability to hold online meetings. As Jennie says, it allows for greater participation and increased diversity and, at a time when some Parish Councils struggle to fill all of their vacancies, anything that might help to solve that would be welcomed. We don’t want to switch to wholly online meetings, but want individual Councils to have the right to hold meetings online as they see fit.

Online meetings also enable greater participation by residents, who might not want to attend all of a meeting, or may not be able to get to the meeting venue due to disability or caring responsibilities.

We found the outgoing Conservative administration to be resistant to our call, but hope that the new Ministerial team will be more willing to listen, and welcome support from Liberal Democrat Parliamentarians, councillors and members.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.