Council investigates putting meetings on the web (From Tivyside Advertiser)

Council investigates putting meetings on the web

9:40am Wednesday 8th February 2012 in News

Plans to broadcast Pembrokeshire County Council meetings on the internet have taken a further step forward .

Members of the Council’s Corporate Governance committee decided to find out more about the detailed cost of providing webcasting of meetings.

Once the cost is known, the matter will return to the committee for a final decision.

“It’s important that we are the guardians of the public record and web casting allows this to happen,” said the Leader of the Council, Councillor John Davies at the meeting this afternoon.

“Some might argue that the cost is too high but others would say that there is no price on the accessibility of proper democracy.”

Today’s meeting followed an earlier decision last summer to agree in principle to webcast council meetings.

A report to today’s meetings reported that at present around 40 councils out of a total of more than 400 in the UK webcast meetings. In Wales only Cardiff webcasts its full council meetings.

The report also said that the cost would likely be in the region of £15,000.

Members voted to take the process a step forward by starting the procurement process for a service contract to provide the web casting of meetings and to report back the outcome to the Governance Committee.

Any webcasting of meetings will be phased in starting with meetings of Full Council.