RBWM agrees to split in-person and virtual meetings

Royal Borough council meetings are set to take place both in-person and virtually over the coming year,  but some councillors have said more scrutiny needs to be ‘built into the system’.

In October 2024, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) launched an open consultation on allowing councillors to attend and vote in meetings remotely.

Following the consultation, in June 2025, MHCLG announced that this mode of attendance would be ‘legislated when parliamentary time allows it’.

At a Royal Borough council meeting on Tuesday, January 20, Councillor Adam Bermange (Lib Dem, Boyn Hill) said that under the current legislation, decision-making meetings and voting cannot happen virtually.

Some non-decision-making meetings can, however, take place online, such as neighbourhood and aviation forums.

A report setting out the meeting schedule for 2026/27 with a split between online and in-person meetings – where legislation allows it – was presented to councillors this week.

Cllr Bermange said: “This [schedule] is all part of getting the correct work-life balance both for members and the officers that attend the evening meetings.

“We saw that [virtual meetings and voting] worked with the temporary legislation during COVID and certainly a lot of members would like to see that happen again.”

The leader of the council, Cllr Simon Werner (Lib Dem, Pinkneys Green) and Cllr Mark Howard (Lib Dem, Bisham and Cookham) agreed that more virtual meetings would be beneficial if the Government allowed it.

Cllr Howard said: “Bearing in mind the costs of arranging places and times and people and heating [up] buildings, I’d like to see this administration looking far more towards trying to go virtual rather than just going to the in standard in-person.”

The council has three overview and scrutiny panels: corporate scrutiny, place overview scrutiny and the adults, children and health overview and scrutiny panel.

Each of these panels will have four scheduled overview and scrutiny meetings in 2026/27, but more meetings can be organised if required.

Previously, an additional two meetings had been scheduled for the corporate overview and scrutiny panel to discuss budget monitoring and quarterly assurance reports, according to the report.

It said, ‘this is no longer necessary’, with four regular meetings to take place and an additional fifth meeting to consider the budget in January.

But some councillors questioned this reduction and said this will ‘weaken democracy’ even if the minimum requirement of meetings is met.

St Mary’s independent councillor Jack Douglas said: “It’s more necessary than ever to have scrutiny at the budget and the quarterly monitoring reports.”

Councillor Sally Coneron (Con, Ascot and Sunninghill) agreed and said residents expect ‘more than the minimum’.

Cllr Coneron said: “Corporate scrutiny is where councillors who are not part of the administration are meant to challenge spending, risk, governance and performance on behalf of residents.

“When you cut the number of scheduled meetings you cut the number of opportunities for that challenge to take place in public. That weakens democracy in practice even if the legal minimum is technically met.”

Although scrutiny panels can organise additional meetings, Cllr Coneron argued that ‘proper scrutiny needs to be built into the system’.

She said: “This council isn’t in a position where less oversight is sensible. We have financial chaos, governance concerns, and residents who already feel decisions are being taken with too little challenge.”

But Cllr Werner said it’s important that the scrutiny panel ‘takes responsibility for themselves’ and ensure they scrutinise ‘everything they feel they need to’.

“It’s really up to scrutiny [to tell] when and how often they meet,” he added.

Ultimately, 27 councillors approved the programme of meetings and 10 voted against it.