All non-essential Powys County Council meetings have been cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Earlier in March several committee meetings were able to take place remotely with members of the public able to watch proceedings online.

But since the UK went into lockdown last week, Powys Council has invoked it’s emergency business continuity plans and now all meetings have been stopped.

Staff from democratic services, the team that organises meetings, have been dispersed to work in other critical areas of the authority such as adults or children’s social services.

The first meeting to be cancelled is the health and care scrutiny committee which was scheduled to take place on Thursday, April 2.

Four meetings had been due to take place from Monday, April 6, before the council went into a quieter period over Easter.

A spokesperson for the council said: “All meetings are cancelled for the time being unless decisions are being made.

“Diary dates have been left in the calendar just in case we do need to convene a meeting.”

They added that the authority was waiting for further guidance of what can and can’t be done by councillors meeting remotely.

At the moment, votes for “significant decisions” can’t be taken by remote link for legal reasons.

Local authorities are waiting for guidance from the Welsh Government on this.

With councils legally bound to hold annual meetings in May, PCC head of legal and democratic services, Clive Pinney, has said that the requirements need to be “relaxed” by then.

At the full council meeting on March 5, a motion was voted through to  temporarily suspend a standing order in the authority’s rules, that prohibits meetings being attended remotely.

This also allowed  chief executive, Dr Caroline Turner, and committee chairs to decide whether remote attendance for a meeting is  appropriate.

The decision was taken so that coronavirus did not affect the day to day running of PCC.