Council meeting webcasting expansion to start today – sort of !

Residents from across Wrexham and beyond are now able to tune in from the comfort of their own homes and watch more local council meetings streamed online than ever before.

A new and somewhat more modern protocol will come into play this month, meaning that all of Wrexham Council’s meetings – subject to the availability of the Guildhall chamber where the camera equipment is installed – will be webcast.

Planning, full council and executive board meetings have all been webcast since the launch of a pilot scheme in 2013. A number of ‘public interest’ scrutiny committee meetings have also been streamed online

However this is the first time that all scrutiny meetings – where possible – will be webcast.

In October 2018 Wrexham.com reported that Wrexham Council’s proposed new policy also opens up how members of the public can “use and re-use the council webcast material that is available to download”.

However material cannot be used for “satirical purposes, advertising, promotion, commercial sponsorship, publicity for commercial purposes or financial gain”.

The move is a far cry from a few years ago when members of the press and public were not allowed to tweet live from council meetings.

The new policy is based around the ethos of the Council’s ICT & Digital Strategy 2017 – 2020, which talks about public engagement, ‘open data’ and transparency “….enabling others to share and use that data and increasing transparency of the Council by allowing stakeholders to understand the reasons for the decisions we make”.

There has been great debate over using common services such as Youtube for video storage, and public viewing. This new report confirms that the archives will be via the Public-i online system for six months and then placed on the council’s own YouTube channel for what will in effect be perpetuity.

Wrexham Council have confirmed to Wrexham.com that the first scrutiny to be webcast under the new protocol will be Employment, Business and Investment this afternoon at 4pm.

However as the item agenda ‘Update on the Economic Development Estate Strategic Asset Management Plan’ is listed as being part two – this will not be webcast or available to the press and public.

Looking ahead to next week, both Homes and Environment and Safeguarding, Communities and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committees are due to take place on Wednesday and are expected to be webcast.