Wrexham Councillors to start holding meetings again weeks as local authority discovers ‘Zoom’

Wrexham Council is finally set to join the new world of Zoom meetings, with public democratic business set to restart on May 28th.

As no business had resumed over two weeks ago, despite the Welsh Parliament, Westminster, other local authorities across the UK and even Community Councils in Wrexham managing to get the hang of Zoom to conduct normal business before WCBC, we queried if there was any progress.

Two weeks ago we also asked the First Minister if he had a message to councils, such as Wrexham, that had not picked up the digital baton and got back to holding local democratic meetings. First Minister Mark Drakeford said such councils “should be thinking about how they can resume some of the normal activity, how they can use arrangements that they have in place to allow scrutiny of the decisions they make, and to make sure that the public are aware of those decisions”.

No timescales or comments were forthcoming from Wrexham Council to our queries.

Speaking to some insiders we understand there has been some negotiation and exploration of options to see if councillors would need to attend the Guildhall, if that would be limited to Group Leaders, or something different. With many councillors now commonly using zoom on a day to day basis it appears a consensus has finally emerged to use that platform.

Finally last night comment emerged from Wrexham Council via their latest Covid-19 update, with a statement explaining why business stopped and when it would restart, with three virtual meetings.

Council Leader Mark Pritchard, and Chief Exec Ian Bancroft said, “Meetings were cancelled in late March as part of our response to Covid-19, and in line with councils across the UK.

“One of the biggest challenges is social distancing, as meetings tend to take place ‘in person’ – with councillors, council staff and other people gathering in one room.

“But guidance issued last month has allowed councils to look at ways to hold key meetings again. As a result, we’re going to use the enterprise version of ‘Zoom’ – a popular conferencing app – to hold three ‘virtual’ meetings”

The three meetings have been listed as:

• Audit Committee – May 28
• Executive Board – June 9
• Planning Committee – June 22

They added, “As far as practicalities and the technology allows, we’ll be aiming to run these meetings in the normal way – including how the meetings are chaired, questions taken and so on.

“We won’t live-stream to begin with, but to aid transparency, we’ll invite local media to observe online. We’ll then post a public recording online as soon as we can afterwards.

“This is going to be a massive learning curve for us, and these initial meetings will help us find our feet…so we’re eventually able to live-stream the proceedings. Like all councils, we’re having to quickly get to grips with new technology and new ways of doing things.

“But we think this approach will give us a way to allow key debates and decisions to take place, while keeping everyone safe.”

Traditionally councillors in Wrexham have been slow to take up digital work, with use of iPads requiring ongoing training rather than self discovery of skills, questions over if Youtube is a safe place to store video rather than a private third party several times smaller than Google, and all but fear of webcasting being brought in.

Although the Welsh Parliament has used Zoom, it has not been without the odd cock up including the below from the Health Minister.

We are told there is fear in some councils in Wales, not Wrexham, over opening up such video feeds incase their members are caught in a similar manner. Luckily Wrexham has been ahead of the game, with the Chair of Planning Cllr Morris already having his own ‘hot mic’ moment.

The Health Minister asks "what the f**k is the matter with…" on a hot mic in today's Zoom based Senedd meeting… we have also done action replay as some AM reactions were amusing! pic.twitter.com/Shh9vhwfhx

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) April 22, 2020

Top picture: A view of a council meeting that will likely not be seen again for a good while yet.