The Queen will miss the Commonwealth summit for the first time in 40 years as part of a review of her long-haul travel, Buckingham Palace has announced.
The 87-year-old, who is head of the Commonwealth, will be represented at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in November by the Prince of Wales.
Charles may not automatically take on the role when he becomes King
The Queen was first present at CHOGM in Ottawa, Canada, in 1973 – missing the inaugural meeting in 1971 – and has been at every summit since. The last meeting was held in Perth, Western Australia, in October 2011.
The biennial event brings together leaders of the 54 countries, representing the two billion citizens who make up the voluntary association.
Buckingham Palace denied that the Queen’s absence was related to calls for a boycott of the meeting over Sri Lanka’s human rights record.
The announcement comes after the Queen was admitted to hospital for the first time in a decade in March suffering from the symptoms of gastroenteritis.
She spent one night at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London for assessment before being driven to Buckingham Palace to rest.
A week of engagements, including a two-day trip to Rome, was cancelled.
The Queen also missed the Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey on March 11, for the first time for 20 years, as she continued to recover.
She attended the Commonwealth reception at Marlborough House that evening to sign the Commonwealth charter but cancelled her engagements for the rest of that week.
The Queen has since resumed her schedule of public appearances, including attending the funeral of Baroness Thatcher in St Paul’s Cathedral and visiting injured servicemen and women at the Headley Court rehabilitation centre in Surrey last week.
The decision to miss the CHOGM meeting in November will be viewed as a blow to the Queen, who sees the Commonwealth as a “family” and takes pride in its work as “a force for good in the world”.
The Queen stayed away from the inaugural CHOGM in Singapore in 1971 after the then British prime minister Edward Heath advised her not to attend because of a row about Britain selling arms to South Africa.
But she is said to have wanted to and regretted not going.
The Duke of Edinburgh once described his wife as the “Commonwealth psychotherapist”, a nod to her informal talks with heads of government at the summit.
In 2007, unusually both the Prince of Wales and the Queen attended the CHOGM in Uganda, the first time Charles has been to an overseas CHOGM. This was seen as a significant step for him.
Although the Queen is head of the Commonwealth, it was thought that Charles would not automatically take on the role when he becomes king.
It will be up to the countries’ heads of government to decide what they want to do with the symbolic post.
But in recent months, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has spoken out in support of Britain’s next monarch taking on the role.
Campaigners including Amnesty International are calling for the CHOGM meeting not to take place in Colombo before an investigation is carried out into human rights abuses in the final six months of the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war.
Britain is facing pressure to lead a boycott of the meeting, with Canada’s government indicating that it will not attend unless specific criteria are met.