The LGA's submission to the Government’s remote attendance and proxy voting at council meetings consultation

The LGA responded that “There should be no limitation placed upon councils with regard to setting arrangements for remote meetings, up to and including full remote attendance” and provided additional comments as below: 

Council meetings are a vital part of local governance processes and provide the mechanisms for decision-making, scrutiny and accountability, as well as a forum for resident engagement. Each councillor is elected to represent their residents’ views and to act in their interest and much of this activity will take place in public council meetings. It is, therefore, paramount that any changes to how councillors attend formal meetings ensure that engagement, transparency and high-quality debate and decision-making continue to be central to how councils conduct their meetings. 

We believe that attending council meetings is a key part of the councillor role and that good-quality engagement is vital to good decision-making. We expect that most councillors would wish and endeavour to fulfil this role in person as often as possible. However, we also know that in some circumstances councillors are prevented from attending council meetings in person due to circumstances beyond their control, such as illness, bereavement, disability, caring responsibilities, work commitments and severe weather events. We believe that allowing remote attendance could support councils to reduce the democratic deficit of councillors being unavoidably unable to attend council meetings in-person.  

We believe that councils should be trusted to set out these arrangements and decide for themselves whether and when remote attendance should be permitted. Councils and other local authorities mentioned in the consultation sit across vastly different geographies and use different forms of governance. A one-size-fits-all approach legislated at the national level would fail to account for the range of local government arrangements and would create unintended consequences at the local level. We expect the best approach would be for councils to set out the circumstances when they would allow remote attendance and relevant arrangements in their constitutions. 

The LGA responded with the comments below: 

We believe that in-person meetings hold value in relation to good debate and accountability of members to the public. However, the flexibility to convene fully virtual council meetings was vitally important to enable democratic decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic; this flexibility is needed in case of future emergencies, such as flooding or other severe weather events. 

We do not agree with the idea of arbitrary limits on the number of fully remote meetings, as this would not have worked during the pandemic and might not be appropriate for future emergencies. Equally, we do not agree with only allowing virtual meetings for unforeseen and exceptional circumstances, unless those circumstances are determined locally. 

We believe that councils should be trusted to agree locally whether and when fully virtual meetings would be permitted. We expect the best approach would be for councils to set out the circumstances when fully virtual meetings would be permitted and relevant arrangements in their constitutions. 

We would support councils being required to give notice if a meeting is being held with full remote attendance, in a similar way to the current requirement to give notice of meeting details five days in advance or closer to the meeting as necessary. 

Standard constitutional arrangements should be mirrored where possible in relation to hybrid and fully remote meetings, although it may be helpful to add additional requirements. For example, requiring members attending remotely to be able to hear and be heard throughout the meeting and, where practical, see and be seen by the public attending the meeting to provide assurance of their engagement and support consistency around what remote attendance involves. This should be detailed in council constitutions. 

Finally, councils should be required to ensure restricted items are managed appropriately and require members attending remotely to join from a private location. Councils should be required to set these requirements out in their constitutions if they intend to allow remote attendance for confidential items. Options could include procedures within the meeting to require remote attendees to confirm they are in an appropriate location before commencing a confidential item and amendments to the councillor code of conduct to specifically encompass the individual responsibility of councillors to protect the confidentiality of these items when attending meetings remotely. The specific requirements should be for the council to determine. 

The LGA responded that legislative change to allow councillors to attend local authority meetings remotely should be considered because “Councils would be more resilient in the event of local or national emergencies which prevent in-person attendance.” 

And provided additional comments as below: 

We support councils having the flexibility to allow councillors to attend council meetings remotely, up to and including fully virtual attendance. We anticipate this will be used differently and have different impacts depending on the council and the local area.

The LGA responded with the below comments on proxy voting: 

Proxy voting in other contexts is used to allow an individual (the "principal”) to cast a specific vote using the physical assistance of another relevant voter (the “proxy”). In company law, electoral law and parliamentary convention, the proxy must be specifically instructed by the principal voter as to the specific vote where the proxy is to be used and precisely how to vote, e.g. yes or no, or for a particular candidate. 

Council votes are typically more complex than these kinds of votes, and new motions and amendments can be made at late notice, each requiring individual attention and decision, making the idea of a traditional proxy impractical. Additionally, councillors must conform to natural justice principles in their decision-making; they must hear all the evidence and not predetermine their decision at an earlier stage. If they fail to do this, the decision may be legally challenged. We are convinced that the traditional process for proxy voting, which requires the principal to give explicit instruction as to how the proxy vote is to be used, is not compatible with the principles of natural justice in council decision-making, which we support as important to good decision-making. 

The consultation suggests that in this context, a proxy should be considered to mean that a member may delegate their voting power to another representative. This would seem to indicate that the principal effectively relinquishes their voting power to another member of the authority, who is able to exercise it at will during the period the proxy arrangement is in place. This would be more compatible with the principles of natural justice as the proxy would not be bound to act as the principal wishes and would be able to make a decision after hearing all the relevant evidence. 

However, we would question whether this interpretation of proxy voting, where the proxy is not bound in any way to act as the principal wishes, would have the intended impact of allowing the principal member to indirectly exercise their democratic duty and have their view taken into account. 

Instead, we believe that the option to delegate to a substitute, which already exists, would appropriately deal with this issue in almost all circumstances except full council meetings. In these circumstances, a proxy might be helpful in extreme circumstances to avoid members being inappropriately encouraged to attend council meetings, such as when they are very unwell or new parents. However, we must also consider that substitutes and proxy voting can only be utilised by some members; for example, ungrouped independent members would be unable to utilise this option as they may not have someone to delegate their voting power to, and this may be seen as creating an unfair advantage for political groups and, in particular, larger parties.