Filming and Recording of Council and Committee Meetings

Well well.On 30 March the General Functions Committee are considering whether they should allow bloggers and tweeters to film council meetings. They are also considering whether the Council should webcast meetings themselves. The report states that "The Council has been advised that the annual revenue cost to the authority would be approximately £14-16K per annum, including: installation; equipment hire; support services (including live monitoring, content hosting, streaming, project management, licence cost, equipment installation and hire); and 80 hours of content streaming". Sounds like good value to me. But wait. One of the options the committee is considering is "That the Committee indicate whether a report should be brought to a future meeting on the detailed financial implications of the various options for introducing a webcasting system to record Council and committee meetings". My concern is that this option gives them an opportunity to say they want webcasting and then kick it into the long grass while they "wait" for the report. I hope councillors listen to the public and make their mind up quickly.