Mike Kiely (chair of POS) put together this short note on planning committees:
PLANNING COMMITTEES AND COVID-19
With
the current COVID-19 restrictions, planning committees have been
cancelled. This position is likely to persist for some time so not
determining those applications until the pandemic is over is not
really an option. Holding committees remotely is currently
unlawful but MHCLG have undertaken to legislate to facilitate
this. Whilst we are waiting for this it’s worth thinking about the
practicalities of how a conference-call or video-link type
committee might work. It is also important to remember that the
officers we will have at our disposal to administer any new
committee arrangements will reduce (possibly dramatically) so we
need to be realistic about what new processes we can put in place;
they need to be as efficient as possible.
We
need to look at the practicalities of this from three different aspects:
-
The
meeting itself
-
Public speaking
-
Public attendance
Authorising
the arrangements for any changes that are made to committee
procedures should be capable of decision by the Chief Executive
via the emergency provisions that are in most Constitutions.
The meeting itself
Having
a conference-call or video-link meeting is relatively easy to
organise. The challenge is managing a very large group of people.
With probably 15 to 20 members and officers in attendance with
your current arrangements, it may be worth considering reducing
the size of the committee to make it more manageable. Officer
attendance should be kept to a minimum. The number of members
should also be reduced to the minimum necessary to maintain
political balance. This is required to enable the chair to manage
the meeting more effectively.
As
the meeting will probably be listened to and not viewed by the
public (especially if it’s a conference call) it will be important
to have clear protocols so that people don’t speak over each other
and that people introduce themselves, so listeners know what is
happening. The role of the chair will be even more important than usual.
Arrangements
will be necessary for handling visual material, but this should be
relatively straightforward. They can be distributed in advance as
PowerPoint or PDF packs and referred to in the meeting. Some video
conferencing facilities will enable them to be displayed during
the virtual meeting but you must be sure all participants can do
so – a simpler solution may be more resilient.
Public speaking
Allowing
any public speakers to join a virtual meeting is likely to
challenge the technology. An alternative solution would be to ask
the speakers to record their speech (as an MP3 file) and email it
to officers in advance of the meeting. This is likely to be better
for most people as they can have several attempts at it until they
are happy it is right – and under the normal time limit. The only
potential downside is there would be no ability to ask questions,
but that should rarely be necessary. You could make arrangements
for speakers to supply their phone numbers and to be on standby so
that any really necessary questions could be done through a phone call.
Public attendance
It
is important to remember that it is a meeting in public and not a
public meeting. The public are there to listen and that is all.
Cheering, booing, clapping and other forms of “participation” are
all against the rules and shouldn’t really happen anyway!
Accordingly, the public are in effect witnesses to the process.
Involving them “live” in a virtual meeting would be impracticable
if not impossible. If a live webcast can be facilitated then fine,
but as an alternative a recording could be made of the virtual
meeting which is then uploaded ASAP to the Council’s website. Such
an approach should cover this element of the process adequately
and not prejudice any party.
Conclusions
It
is hoped that these notes assist in making decisions around these
issues. It is essential to design new procedures that are as
simple as possible and do not rely on complex technology
arrangements. Broadband capacity is already under strain, so
telephony may be more resilient. It is also important to remember
that the human resources we have to service new arrangements will
diminish and possibly do so significantly.
