Herts Council Virtual Meetings

County councillors in Hertfordshire held virtual meeting for the first on Friday.

10:59 21 April 2020

The coronavirus crisis has forced the government to impose strict social distancing protocols to prevent the transmission of the virus. For councillors, this means cancelling or postponing their meetings indefinitely for their own safety. 

 

However, the Government has recently issued new guidelines allowing local government units to hold their meetings virtually and many councils across the country have met virtually for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic. Among them is Hertfordshire County Council, whose first virtual meeting was held on 17 April, Friday. 

 

The council has established a special cabinet panel to temporarily replace the county council's existing cabinet panels. It will have a changing membership of 12 councillors - seven Conservatives, three Liberal Democrats and two Labour. The councillors will be selected on a meeting by meeting basis, depending on the items on the agenda. 

 

The councillors discussed the local authority's response to the Covid-19 outbreak and a financial update on that response. Members of the panel joined the meeting remotely and up to 500 members of the public were allowed to observe the meeting. 

 

Other lower-tier councils such as Welwyn Hatfield have already held video-conferencing meetings - with the first cabinet video-stream taking place on April 7.