Blog: 07/01/22 - Helen McGrath, LLG Head of Public Affairs

It hasn't quite been the gentle easing back to work I had been hoping for this New Year. Instead, we were met by Lord Greenhalgh's response to Baroness Bennett's parliamentary question on remote meeting provision, with the highly repeated adopted line, 'a change of primary legislation is required… which is dependent on parliamentary time'. We are now 7 months from the call for evidence, in the midst of a surging wave of Omicron and drowning in testimonials from authorities about cancelled meetings, lack of quorum, reductions in attendance, increasing costs, lack of ventilation and vulnerable councillors; it begs the question to what extent does democracy have to be eroded before provision is made? Things must be drastic as Jackie Weaver is back in the news and helpfully advocating in the strongest terms for remote meeting provision. Indeed, the Guardian ran a feature which links LLG's and ADSO's recently launched petition calling for legislation (which I urge you all to sign); representative of our last-ditch attempt to bring about some sort of provision. We wrote again to Kemi Badenoch just before Christmas, we have this week written to the Shadow Secretary at the DLUHC, Lisa Nandy. Now is the time to collectively make a lot of noise. There are other long-term gains from remote meeting provision; right now, however, there are essential needs of grave magnitude.

Looking ahead to matters the government does have parliamentary time to accommodate; the Elections Bill is currently at the report stage in the House of Commons. The Judicial Review and Courts Bill (which might yet be subject to further change, so listen to Mondays Grapevine podcast for more on that), and the Local Government Disqualification Bill are also at report stage. The Health and Care Bill is at committee stage in the House of Lords, as too is the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill. Other areas to watch are of course the current consultation on Human Rights Reform, and whether anything materialises on the planning reforms or indeed, levelling up.
Turning to in-house matters, we have a free member only Licensing National Lead meeting on 18th January and lots of training opportunity available on planning, 106 agreements, political awareness and traffic orders. As usual, members receive discounts on paid for training which can be accessed at https://www.llglegaltraining.org.uk/
Finally, we will this month be advertising a range of board director opportunities at LLG including the position of Deputy Vice President. If you would like an informal discussion in relation to DVP, then please contact me in the first instance and I can arrange discussions with our current officer holders and CEO.

Best wishes
Helen McGrath
Head of Public Affairs
Helen@llg.org.uk