‘On 28 April 2021 (in R (Hertfordshire County Council) v Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government [2021] EWHC 1093 (Admin)) (Hertfordshire), Dame Victoria Sharp P and Chamberlain J considered whether the reference to a ‘meeting’ in schedule 12 to the Local Government Act 1972 (Meetings and Proceedings of Local Authorities) could include a meeting conducted wholly or partly remotely. The court decided it could not. ‘The question for us,’ they remarked, ‘is not what “meeting” means in the abstract, or in some other context, but what it means in the particular statutory context of schedule 12 to the 1972 act’, which needed to be read as a whole. Schedule 12 (among other things) included obligations to hold the meeting ‘at such place, either within or without their area’ as a principal council, parish council or community council may direct. Consequently, ‘a “place within or without the area” is most naturally interpreted as a reference to a particular geographical location and would not naturally encompass an online location’. And: ‘Attending a meeting at a single specified geographical location would… ordinarily mean physically going to that location.’’
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Law Society's Gazette, 26th July 2024
Source: www.lawgazette.co.uk
