Public meetings take place online

Edition: Summer 2020

One of the biggest challenges in Local Government when social distancing and lockdown measures were introduced was managing the democratic process safely and lawfully.

A public meeting takes place online using video-conferencing

Public meetings, including Full Council, Cabinet and Planning Committee, take place regularly and it’s our duty and legal obligation to ensure they are as accessible to the public as they would be normally.

The online conferencing solution that the Democratic Services team developed is working well. All meeting attendees sign in to the video-conferencing platform Zoom, and the meeting event is streamed live on the Council’s YouTube channel.

Meeting attendees are able to raise their hand to ask questions in the meeting
Votes are done by asking each member in turn whether they agree or not, as they would be in person
If a councillor has connectivity issues and misses a portion of the discussion about an issue, they are excluded from voting on that particular issue.

It’s great that the public are now able to watch our meetings live on the internet. While councillors are happy to attend the meetings from home, I think we all miss the traditional format of being in the same room together.

David Penrose, Democratic Services Manager