Councillors to discuss returning to live broadcast of all meetings

Councillors will discuss a move to restore live broadcasting for all council meetings, just in time for Christmas.

If councillors agree the motion at a Powys County Council meeting on Thursday, October 13 all live broadcasts would need to be restored within 60 days.

The recommendation comes from the Democratic Services committee after  Cllr Graham Breeze championed the restoration of live streaming at their September meeting.

In May, senior council staff took the decision to stop streaming most Powys committee meetings live online.

The council’s scrutiny meetings on education, social service, environment, economy, pensions, licensing, and democratic services are now only held online without public access.

Meetings are uploaded and can be watched afterwards.

In his report, the council’s head of legal services and monitoring officer, Clive Pinney has interpreted that the “minimum requirement” under Welsh Government legislation that governs broadcasting meetings is that the “full council meeting” is broadcast.

The issues on live broadcasting are due to the need of having a Welsh language translation facility.

At the Democratic Services meeting last month it was said that a return to full broadcasting “worst case scenario” costs would be between “£80,000 and £90,000.”

However the report says that the cost  is £3650 if the council uses Zoom Webinar software to broadcasting meetings.

Mr Pinney said: “Additional funding was allocated in the current year’s budget to meet the additional costs of web casting, the additional £3,560 per annum can be met from this allocation.”

“Since this (Democratic Services) meeting officers have been testing Zoom webinars / events which provides the ability to broadcast meetings live to the public and also allows the public to hear simultaneous translation where this is required.

“This way of broadcasting can be done at a much lower cost than originally thought.”

Mr Pinney adds that more testing of the software and training for councillors will be needed.

Following local elections in May, councillors have returned to the council chamber at county hall in Llandrindod Wells for some meetings.

They take place in a hybrid format, which sees some councillors in the chamber and others take part online.

The public are able to watch full council and cabinet proceedings at the chamber in person or live online.

Similarly, the planning committee meetings are open to the public to view in the chamber but are not streamed live online yet.