News & Events

Listed below are the national news items and national events.

Introducing Work Experience Week
Publish date: 26/03/2021
Are you a student looking for work experience? interested in working in law in local government’ Lawyers In Local Government are delighted to announce our new national work experience programme. Students will experience first hand the varied day to day life of a lawyer within a local authority.
LLG Webinar: Building Safety Bill
Publish date: 26/03/2021
Doug Rhodes and Stuart Brown of Trowers & Hamlin will be our guest speakers on this weeks webinar and will provide an overview of the timeline leading up to the draft Building Safety Bill and a recap of the key issues included in the bill, including the new regulator, the dutyholder regime and the in-occupation duties arising
LLG & ADSO OBTAIN PERMISSION TO MOVE FORWARD WITH THE COURT DECLARATION ON VIRTUAL MEETING PROVISION BEFORE 6th MAY 2021.
Publish date: 24/03/2021
ADSO and LLG (along with Hertfordshire County Council) have received permission to expedite our claim for a declaration in the High Court which will provide certainty for local authorities on whether they can continue to hold meetings remotely past the 6th May 2021 deadline, due to the expiry of the Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels (Coronavirus) (Flexibility of Local Authority Police and Crime Panel Meetings) (England and Wales) Regulations (No.392).
The LLG Grapevine - Week 38 Available Now
Publish date: 22/03/2021
Talking Law in Local Government
The LLG Grapevine - Week 37 Available Now
Publish date: 22/03/2021
Talking Law in Local Government
LLG Webinar: Employee Vaccinations
Publish date: 22/03/2021
Can employers require employees to get vaccinated? How do we manage testing and employees refusing to go to work? Join us at our free webinar on March 3rd 12-1pm.
Last chance to respond to the Centre for Governance & Scrutiny's annual survey.
Publish date: 22/03/2021
The CfGS annual survey closes to responses at the end of this week. With a particular section of questions on remote meetings it would be helpful to LLG if you could complete the survey the results of which will be shared with us.
Local government bodies celebrate revocation of exit payment cap regulations
Publish date: 22/03/2021
LLG and ALACE have welcomed the revocation of the Restriction of Public Sector Exit Payments Regulations 2020 on 19 March. This is a direct outcome of their judicial review claim seeking to have the regulations quashed. Other judicial review claims had been launched by a range of other bodies, including the main local government unions, however LLG and ALECE will be withdrawing the claim following the success of explicit provisions which require additional payments with interest.
The LLG Grapevine - Week 36 Available Now
Publish date: 22/03/2021
Talking Law in Local Government
National Lead Junior Professionals Zoom Meeting 11th March 12pm
Publish date: 22/03/2021
LLG’s latest National Lead Meeting will feature guest speakers Amardeep Gill, Louis Sebastian & Jo Putnam from Trowers & Hamlins. In this session they will look at 360 review of what skills are needed to be a successful lawyer in the dynamic local government sector

Blog

30 April 2021

Publish date: 30/04/2021

Whoever said that the law was dull and who could have imagined that a meeting of a dysfunctional parish council could attract a thousand viewers via you tube. Perhaps this surrealist vision is a reflection of the dreamlike year of lockdown we've all just lived through. A time when councils across the land, overnight, converted the way they conducted their most significant decision making from the age old 'face to face' meeting to the new world or Zoom, MS Teams and 'legacy hands'.

The transformation happened overnight and for many it all got off to a shaky start with congested bandwidth, feedback and councillors demonstrating their need for basic ICT skills training. Worse than this were the occasions where councillors forgot that they were on video….perhaps the less said the better. However, we quickly overcame these initial hurdles and found ways to avoid the feedback. We learnt by our mistakes and built in regular breaks to the meetings and developed protocols to bring order to the proceedings.

Fast forward to the present and there must have been literally tens probably hundreds of thousands of fully remote meetings conducted during the last 12 months. Perhaps the most notable fact is that Handsworth Parish Council was the only one to go viral and this is probably due to the fact that the vast majority of the remote meetings were successfully conducted and achieved satisfactory outcomes.

So it was disappointing to read the recent judgement of the President of the QBD and Mr Justice Chamberlain which concluded that the court should not in this case utilise the updating approach to statutory interpretation in light of contextual changes, but instead to stand back and leave the issue for parliament to decide. The argument around the role of the courts and that of the parliament has a familiar ring to it, reminiscent of the Brexit litigation.

The disappointment doesn't arise from any lack of technical prowess in the construction of the judgement which, as you'd expect from judges of this calibre is succinct and logical in its execution. However, it's the implicit underlying presumption that Local Authorities aren't able or can't be trusted to safely conduct these meetings without Parliament having imposed an additional layer of prescriptive rules which undermines this judgement. This is at odds with the reality that we've all experienced at the chalk face.

So, for me the last few weeks have proved to be a bit of a legal rollercoaster. On the one hand, a fascinating opportunity to experience the High Court in action in seeking to make sense of arguments which are more nuanced than many straightforward legal actions with two parties slogging it out as opposed to this case in which all parties had a shared view which, as it transpired, was at odds with the Judges. On the other, the irony of the hearing itself getting off to a shaky start due to the court having some technical issues which caused feedback when counsel delivered their submission. It was surely a portent.

Although the court chose not to exercise its discretion in our favour the process of taking the application to court has strengthened the resolve to do whatever is necessary to enable the option for remote attendance to become a permanent option in the future and we will work with MHCLG to enable it to happen quickly and effectively.

Best wishes

Quentin Baker

LLG President