News & Events

Listed below are the national news items and national events.

International Women's Day 2021
Publish date: 22/03/2021
'Choose to Challenge' on International Women's Day
National Lead Monitoring Officer & Governance Zoom Meeting 12pm 25th March
Publish date: 22/03/2021
For LLG latest National Lead meeting for Monitoring Officer & Governance, our guest speaker for this session will be Mark Heath from VWV where he will look at the Pre-Election Period for Monitoring Officers.
Latest Position - Court Declaration on Virtual Meeting Provision
Publish date: 22/03/2021
ADSO and LLG, along with Hertfordshire County Council, are pleased to announce that our claim has been issued in the High Court to allow for the continuation of local authority remote meetings beyond the 6th May 2021. The claim also included an application for the Court to expedite proceedings to ensure a decision is made before the deadline. The Local Government Association, the National Association of Local Councils and the Welsh Government Minister for Housing and Local Government have been listed as interested parties and will have the opportunity to submit evidence should they wish.
Guidance for Covid Secure Elections 2021
Publish date: 22/03/2021
Hertfordshire County Council have produced Guidance for Covid Secure Elections 2021 spearhead by their Director of Public Health Jim McManus, as part of their Hertfordshire Covid-19 Safe Elections Public Health Guidance Group comprising several senior officers including our own President, Quentin Baker ,who is the Chief Legal Officer and Returning Officer at Hertfordshire. It covers general infection control measures, communications to voters prior to polling day, candidate briefings and nomination arrangements, polling stations and counting operations. Published with grateful thanks to Hertfordshire and Jim McManus.
Last chance to respond to the Centre for Governance & Scrutiny's annual survey.
Publish date: 02/03/2021
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.
The LLG Grapevine - Week 35 Available Now
Publish date: 01/03/2021
Talking Law in Local Government
LLG & ADSO Serve Pre-Action Letter on Secretary of State
Publish date: 25/02/2021
The Association of Democratic Services Officers (ADSO) and Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) have been lobbying the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to change primary legislation to enable local authority remote meetings to take place beyond the current statutory deadline of 6 May 2021. In the event of this not being successful, and to support the Secretary of State in his wish to find a solution, ADSO, LLG and Hertfordshire County Council have instructed counsel to issue proceedings in the High Court to seek a declaratory judgement to enable such meetings to take place within existing legislation.
LLG Appoints New Employment National Lead Felicia Epstein
Publish date: 25/02/2021
LLG are delighted to announce the appointment our new National Lead for Employment Felicia Epstein at the launch of our Employment Zoom Meeting today.
The LLG Grapevine - Week 34 Available Now
Publish date: 22/02/2021
Talking Law in Local Government
Presidents Blog – Exit Cap Success and the Role of LLG
Publish date: 19/02/2021
Quentin Baker, President of LLG discusses the Government's climb down following the revocation of the Exit Cap Payment Regulations alongside the role both he and LLG played together with ALACE, in bringing Judicial Review proceedings to challenge the flaws in the Regulations.

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