WINCHESTER councils are being forced to reshuffle meetings and put in place social distancing provisions after the High Court ruled they cannot continue with remote meetings.

As part of the Coronavirus Act 2020, local authority meetings could be carried out remotely, such as via virtual Zoom meetings, from April last year until Friday last week.

During the pandemic, hundreds of meetings have been held online, including county, city and parish meeting.

But now councils are having to make major changes as the Government said it would not legislate to allow that to carry on beyond May 7 and physical meetings must now resume.

Winchester City Council has said that it has been making arrangements for various possible outcomes.

A council spokesperson said: “We were aware of the High Court challenge and had made arrangements for various possible outcomes. Now that the decision has been made we will be making appropriate arrangements for our meetings which start from 18 May. The welfare of everyone who attends a meeting in person will remain our priority, so we will ensure that Covid secure measures are in place.”

The council has been asked whether these meetings will be open to members of the public to attend and to speak at, but it has yet to respond.

The authority does already audio broadcast its meetings live to those who wish to listen in.

However, other authorities have taken the decision to reshuffle their meetings – Sparsholt Parish Council being one of those.

The council decided to change its meeting dates for May and June by moving this month’s meeting to May 7 and next month’s will not be until June 21.

Under current Government guidance face-to-face meetings are not allowed until May 17 and then they are limited to the rule of six. Only from June 21 is the council allowed to meet with the public in attendance - if lockdown restrictions are eased on the previously announced dates.

But other councils are trying to work round the legislation with Headbourne Worthy holding a “meeting of parish councillors” rather than an official parish council meeting last night (Monday).

Hertfordshire County Council brought a bid against the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to have the measures, introduced in secondary legislation, extended.

At a hearing last month, Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain were asked to consider whether remote meetings in England could continue under existing 1972 legislation regulating local Government.

MHCLG was “supportive in principle” of the proposed claim, arguing it could be met by the court giving its opinion on what “meeting”, “place” and “present” mean in the existing law.

Lawyers for Hertfordshire County Council argued that the word “place” could include metaphorical places such as cyberspace or a website.

However, the judges dismissed the claim, concluding that primary legislation would be needed to extend the use of remote meetings.

In a ruling on Wednesday, they said: “We can readily accept that ‘meeting’ can in some context encompass virtual or remote meetings: since March 2020 it has become common to refer to a ‘Zoom meeting’.

“But in other contexts, ‘meeting’ would not carry that meaning. If a meeting is to be ‘either in or outside London’ one would not expect it to be conducted online.”

The pair said local authority gatherings are an important part of Government and require certainty on what it means to attend a meeting.

They added that after the regulations expire “such meetings must take place at a single, specified geographical location; attending a meeting at such a location means physically going to it, and being ‘present’ at such a meeting involves physical presence at that location”.

The judges continued: “The decision whether to permit some or all local authority meetings to be conducted remotely, and if so, how and subject to what safeguards, involves difficult policy choices on which there is likely to be a range of competing views.