Portsmouth council to hold first virtual meeting amid pandemic

Councillors and officials of Portsmouth City Council are set to meet in an online forum on Tuesday next week for its annual general meeting that usually acts as the first session of the political year following local elections.

Despite the fact elections were scrapped due to the pandemic the meeting, which is expected to be hosted on either of the the video call platforms Microsoft Teams or Zoom, will signal a return to typical council proceedings.

Council leader, Councillor Gerald Vernon-Jackson, said: 'This is the first time we have done this - not the first time in the country though because other councils have already started online meetings.

'Although this will be doing things in a slightly different way to usual if we can we want things to run as normally as possible.

'It's still the normal order of business.'

During the meeting the new lord mayor and deputy lord mayor for the year will be confirmed and committee seats will be allocated.

Councillor Vernon-Jackson added: 'This is how meetings will be held for a while. The next meeting that will be held this month will be a planning committee.'

Members of the public will be able to tune into the meeting live by finding the link via the council meeting calendar on portsmouth.gov.uk.

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