My county council’s disrespect for the public it serves is both distressing and illegal.

One day in November 2024 I bowled up at Devon County Hall in Exeter to observe a meeting of a council committee, something I had been doing for several years at both city council and county council levels. Presenting myself at reception I was refused entry. The explanation given was a recent policy decision which limited the room capacity to 20 members of the public, including the 18 who had registered to ask questions on this occasion.

The meeting in question was the Exeter Highways and Traffic Orders committee (HATOC) which had been handed the poisoned chalice of political oversight in introducing a Low Traffic Neighbourhood into part of the city. The proposal was mishandled from start to finish and led to angry scenes at previous meetings of the committee during 2024.

Following these rowdy meetings at the HATOC, the council’s Governance Working Group (GWG) discussed “Security and Safety at Committee Meetings”. The GWG is not a formal committee so the rules about public access do not apply, that is they meet in private. Using the Freedom of Information Act I was able to obtain a complete set of GWG minutes, which are now available for anyone to read here. The relevant meetings are those held on 23 September and 9 December 2024.

These discussions took place drawing on a background briefing provided by Devon County Council (DCC) officers which is available here. Section 2 makes it clear that the driver for change is a response to “meetings that have generated significant public interest and protest and resulted in increased numbers of the public attending meetings”. The notion that more people want to attend meetings appears pretty horrific to the author.

Indeed, the briefing paper is riddled with anti-public sentiment. Section 5 gives a strong impression that the public are unwelcome. There are references to roping us off from the chamber, putting us behind fences, and ensuring that the public seating is located as far to the back of the room as is possible.

That this is the driver for the new policy is reinforced by the former Leader of the Council’s remarks during the full Council meeting on 20 February 2025 when he referred to the behaviour of some members of the public; and by a health and safety risk assessment dated 10 December 2024 for public committee meetings taking place at County Hall, which states the dominant risk is one of public disorder.

This background is important since it makes clear that the restriction on numbers is a deliberate policy choice rather than one imposed by the capacity of the committee rooms.

At the Council meeting on 20 February 2025 I made an oral “Representation” on the subject, which is available on YouTube starting at 38mins 30 secs into the meeting. One or two councillors made supportive noises, but I otherwise I might as well have been talking to myself.

I subsequently prepared more detailed arguments against the policy, based on three main objections: legality, effectiveness, and practicability. Let’s take legality first.

Is it legal?

Section 100A(6)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972 states “while the meeting is open to the public, the council shall not have power to exclude members of the public from the meeting”. Bizarrely, DCC claims its policy is compliant with the law.

In May 2021, the High Court handed down a judgement at the conclusion of proceedings about the ability of councils to continue holding meetings remotely following the expiry of the temporary regulations made under the Coronavirus Act 2020. Much of the argument revolved round the definition of a “meeting”.

The judges concluded:
if, as we have found, a meeting involves participants gathering to meet face-to-face at a designated physical location and “attending” a meeting involves physically going to that location, a requirement that this meeting is to be “open to the public” or “held in public” means that members of public must be admitted in person to the place where the meeting is being held.

In relation to maximum numbers the judges stated:
We say nothing about the numbers of the members of the public who should be admitted in person, which will no doubt be subject to current public health or Government guidance. But subject to that practical consideration, or any other legislative intervention, where the requirement for the meeting to be “open to the public” or “held in public” applies, members of the public must be admitted in person as well.

It is therefore incumbent on DCC to cite the relevant public health or government guidance. The temporary pandemic-related safeguards are no longer current, and I have not been able to identify any other guidance or legislation that would override the requirement to admit the public. DCC have not identified to me any such guidance.

The judges also concluded that while councils did have the option of live-streaming meetings, a point which DCC makes in support of its new policy, such broadcasting or live-streaming does not, on its own, satisfy the requirement for the meeting to be “open to the public” or “held in public”.

Will it be effective?

Given the aims of the new policy, it is not clear how the 20-person maximum will reduce the risk of disruption. It only takes one or two people to achieve disorder by making threats, shouting and so on. Section 3 of the briefing note describes the options for dealing with disorder, which include removing troublemakers from the meeting (see note 1). If DCC really is so concerned about public behaviour, it is hard to see that an arbitrary limit on the number of public attendees provides a solution.

Nor is it reasonable for DCC to claim that 20 is the maximum physical capacity for public seats in meeting rooms. Prior to the change numbers well in excess of 20 were admitted to committee rooms.

Is it practicable?

The policy relies on allowing admission on a first come first served basis. There is no advance booking system, so someone may turn up and be refused entry, perhaps having made a long journey across the county.

Nor is live-streaming a proper and practical alternative (quite apart from the lawfulness point mentioned above). If someone turns up to be told they cannot get into the meeting but can have a QR code to watch it on a live stream, that is not a real option. Assuming the person is in the County Hall reception area, the meeting starts in 15 minutes and their computer screen is at home, then they are in practice being denied access to the meeting. And not everyone has a smart phone or is able to view a meeting on a small screen.

Before the policy change, overflow rooms were provided. The briefing paper dismisses this facility on the grounds that they “are difficult to manage and resource intensive”. It is not clear why this long-standing approach is being abandoned, particularly since the public will gain access meetings held in the Daw Room via the adjacent Roborough Room.

I made these points in a note sent to the Director of Legal and Democratic Services on 10 March 2025. We agreed that there was little point in pursuing matters until after the county council elections on 1 May. Since then, a despite the election of a new LibDem/Green administration, not a whisper of a response.

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The previous Conservative administration is the – albeit passive – author of our present woes. There is no evidence in the GWG minutes that the policy change was discussed, let alone thought through, by councillors: only one reference at the 23 September meeting alludes to the issue, with the following suggestion: “A ticket system that would prioritise registered speakers and manage the flow of members of the public attending”. Given that speakers can take up almost all or perhaps even all the seats any reference to the flow of members of the public is ingenuous.

The new policy was slipped through the Council’s Procedures Committee on 6 February 2025. The following clear statement was included in the revised guidance on public participation: Committee seating is generally limited to 20 seats. Priority will be given to those making a representation or asking a question, and the remaining seats are allocated on a first come first served basis. There is no standing room in the Committee rooms. The seating for Council meetings or Committee meetings that take place in the Council Chamber is 45 seats.

Yet no attention was drawn to it in the covering report. Indeed, misleadingly the report states: The revised public participation guidance has not significantly changed, for example no public engagement opportunities have been withdrawn. Well, I beg to differ.

The last GWG meeting of the previous administration was held on 17 March 2025. The not wholly comprehensible minutes read:

Denying people the chance to see their elected representatives at work as a response to the indefensible conduct of a few bad apples is a disproportionate response.

On the evidence of the facts alone, the new policy is flawed, unlawful and disrespectful to the public. DCC should review it as a matter of some urgency.

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Note 1. Section 100A(8) of the 1972 Act states: This section is without prejudice to any power of exclusion to suppress or prevent disorderly conduct or other misbehaviour at a meeting.

Note 2. Clinton and Fortescue are the names of County Hall committee rooms.