Council backs equipment upgrade

The council is set to spend £50,000 on upgrading its “embarrassing” recording equipment so it can live stream meetings.

Malvern Hills District Council’s executive committee approved plans to install new video recording equipment in the Council Chamber in Malvern at a meeting on Tuesday (May 24).

Cllr Peter Whatley, portfolio holder for resources, said the council needed to upgrade its “embarrassing equipment.”

“Our current system in this room, which is audio-only, is obsolescent and we have issues with the microphones and the batteries, which are very costly and quite a few of which need replacing,” he said.

“It is limited in function to the point where it is becoming embarrassing in the sense that we can only do audio transmission to YouTube or other media.

“Most of our surrounding councils do full video with automatic pickup of the speakers, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you view it, so the public can see what we are up to. There will be no hiding behind laptops.

“The important thing is that it puts us on a footing to do things in the future which are likely to become a matter of public expectation as well as probably hopefully enhancing democracy.

“Seeing what is going on and being able to participate in meetings at distance, if that becomes legal as it was during Covid.

“Of course, we will also benefit our destination zero objectives by not dragging people from Tenbury or Upton to Malvern for short meetings because we have to by law.”

MHDC records the audio of its meetings but is the only council in Worcestershire that does use video.

Temporary laws were introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic which allowed for council meetings to take place virtually as long as they were live streamed which allowed the council to use Zoom and YouTube to host meetings.

These measures came to an end in May last year forcing councils to return to face-to-face meetings.

The Local Government Association (LGA) is championing a move towards video live-streaming to allow the public to watch meetings and join virtually in a bid to improve transparency and engagement.