Following questions from the council’s Liberal Democrats about how it intended to make its Annual Council meeting on 20 May COVID-safe, East Cambridgeshire District Council has moved the meeting forward a month, to 22 April.

The Government recently announced that it would not allow councils to continue to meet remotely – using Zoom, for example – beyond 7 May. (It’s now started a consultation on remote meetings, but that won’t report for months and months.)

So how would 28 councillors, a clutch of council officers, press, and interested members of the public be kept safe on 20 May, crammed in the small council chamber at The Grange for the annual council meeting?

I wrote to the Chief Executive on Friday on behalf of my council group to ask. I also wrote to one of the senior officers to ask for a copy of the risk assessment.

I didn’t get a reply from the Chief Executive, and the senior officer said the Council hadn’t yet done a risk assessment.

But this morning I was told that the meeting will now take place a month early, to beat the Government clamp-down.