Until April 2020, no Councils met online for full Council or Committee meetings – they simply weren’t legally allowed to do so. When new legislation to allow Councils to meet online in response to Covid-19 was put in place in April 2020 (currently to expire in May 2021) then Councils had to learn how to adapt and meet online fast.
Sandgate Parish Council was one of the first to do so, and came up with a structure that worked quite quickly. All online council and committee meetings of Sandgate Parish Council are held on Zoom, and all broadcast from there on Facebook Live to our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/sandgatepc/
Any member of the public is welcome to watch the meetings live on our Facebook page, and recordings of meetings will be available to view after the meeting on Facebook for at least one month.
Since April, emails from the public to the Council have been raised and noted at full Council and Planning meetings (as appropriate). However, we wanted to go further and reinstate the ability for people to ask questions at full Council and make representations to Planning meetings themselves if they so wish.
We think we now have a reasonable way to do so, so in addition, the public are welcomed to ask questions directly at full council meetings, and make representations on applications at Planning meetings, as well as emailing in to either as before. The guidance / protocol to doing so is at https://sandgatepc.org.uk/public-speaking-at-online-meetings-of-sandgate-parish-council-protocol/