“We will open up this council to true democracy, transparency and openness” – all council meetings streamed online from 2019

You could be tuning into watch debates on the likes of Wrexham’s markets, the council’s budget, local education and dog fouling from the comfort of your own home.

Yesterday councillors unanimously backed plans to webcast all council meetings – including scrutiny committees – from the main council chamber from next year

Councillors had been asked to vote on proposals to lease webcasting equipment to allow scrutiny meetings to be streamed online from one of the guildhall’s meeting rooms.

Earlier this month Wrexham.com reported that members of the democratic services committee had debated how the local authority could increase its engagement and “get out of the dark ages”.

Currently the council’s webcasting service is provided via a company called Public-i, which offers streaming and archiving services to a number of local authorities across the country.

As part of the package Wrexham Council webcast all executive board, full council and planning meetings from the main council chamber. In recent years several 10 hours of ‘public interest’ – such as town centre and health issues – scrutiny committees have also been streamed online.

Speaking at yesterday’s meeting chairman of the Democratic Services Committee, Cllr Malcolm King, explained that councillors had agreed to expand the webcasting to scrutiny committee with equipment installed in another meeting room, if funding was available.

Cllr King said: “I remain confident providing webcasting from committee room one would be best solution as we recommended.

“We all recognise that we can’t always afford best solution. Certainly setting additional cost which would be over the next three years £20,000 against the sort of cuts we have to make next year, which will no doubt most difficult ones we’ve made so far will be difficult to justify.

“The leader was right to point out it’s a difficult issue to argue against.”

He added: “Members have become accustomed to the leader of the council and I making every effort to agree with one and another, today is a very good example of that.

“The unusual bit is I will be moving the committee’s recommendation and hopefully one of the committee members will second it.

“The leader of the council will them be moving an amendment before you based on a discussion he and I had about a week ago.”

Leader of Wrexham Council, Cllr Mark Pritchard, said that he didn’t feel the committee’s proposal had gone far in enough – instead proposing that subject to availability of the main chamber and practicalities, all scrutiny meetings are webcast when the webcasting contract is renewed in January 2019.

This would include the council purchasing additional bundles of time to stream the meetings, rather than buying additional equipment.

Cllr Pritchard said: “The reason I will move this amendment is sometime ago we as a council with full political support said we will open up this council to true democracy, transparency and openness.

“We have certain committees which are filmed and they go out to our constituents and residents. That is wonderful and long may it continue.

“However some committees do not. For me that is where the fault lies. I think we should have the webcam on all scrutiny across the authority, I think that is the only way forward for us.”