Council pulls the plug on £30,000 web casts

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Cheshire East Council has put a stop to the filming of cabinet meetings due to the high costs.

Last year the Council spent around £30,000 recording 12 Cabinet meetings which on average were viewed by just over 200 people, many of which will have been council staff members.

Instead they have embarked on audio webcasts of all of its decision-making public meetings.

The move follows a trial of the recording technology over several months and will see both live audio and archived recordings made available to the public.

The new arrangements come at a vastly reduced cost – around £4,000 a year in total – compared with £30,000 for video webcasting of cabinet meetings only.

Councillor Peter Groves, Cheshire East Council cabinet member for democratic and public engagement, said: "The council places great importance on transparency around its decision-making – but it also recognises this must be balanced by consideration of the cost to the public purse.

"The changes we have made have greatly expanded the recording of all formal meetings across the council – totalling around 200 a year – and brought greater openness and transparency to the work that we carry out on behalf of our residents."

Because Cheshire East has no permanent, dedicated council chamber and holds a high number of public meetings, the costs of setting up and dismantling video recording equipment for council meetings has proved prohibitive.

Figures showed that only about 65 people viewed the live video and 141 viewed the archived video. A number of these will have been council staff members.

Cllr Groves added: "The view was taken by elected members that, whilst arrangements should be kept under review, a less costly balance needed to be found which ensured transparency of decision making.

"Now, with audio recordings of all meetings being made available live online and on our archive, people who cannot attend meetings can be informed in a timely manner about the debate and decisions taken across the whole range of business of council – and not just cabinet meetings.

"Moreover, the relevant audio recording of debate and decisions is now attached to each agenda item's minutes – saving listeners from having to search across a recording of the whole meeting.

"This is particularly helpful given that some planning meetings, for example, have been known to last for almost 10 hours.

"I am pleased to say that, generally, the recording system has worked extremely effectively for meetings and we have had very positive feedback from council members and the public in relation to the audio system we have introduced.

"The council believes residents will welcome this expansion of openness and transparency – and the greater value for money it delivers for local council taxpayers."

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Cheshire East Council
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Comments

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.

Julie Smith
Thursday 6th July 2017 at 8:27 pm
£30,000 for something that very few even knew about? What planet do these people live on? Video the meetings and post on a dedicated Facebook page! Cost to council tax payers............NOTHING!!!! Who makes these ludicrous decisions on how to waste our money?
Dave Cash
Friday 7th July 2017 at 2:03 am
I'm all for saving money, but what will happen to the eqpt, camera etc, bought at C Tax payers expense?
Use it to record all key meetings and establish a searchable meetings archive on CEC website. Continue with live voice-only relay.
By how much will a £30K saving reduce CEC C Tax next year?
Transparency.
Julie Smith
Friday 7th July 2017 at 12:20 pm
£30,000 for something that very few even knew about? What planet do these people live on? Video the meetings and post on a dedicated Facebook page! Cost to council tax payers............NOTHING!!!! Who makes these ludicrous decisions on how to waste our money?
Manuel Golding
Sunday 9th July 2017 at 1:35 pm
What a wonderful excuse to hide their misgovernment away from the voters.
£30,000 for a democratic process is nothing especially compared to the other costly sagas.
Where do we start? Ah yes, Lyme Green, conservatively estimated at £2 million. Numerous
highly paid, some would say over-paid, senior officers who have "quit" for one reason or another, take the current, suspended chief exec on £246,000 pa and his fellow suspendees;
the buses fiasco, the ill conceived joint operation with Cheshire West resulting in millions for pension shortfalls, millions wasted on the ill-conceived Local Plan...........we could go on but
do not wish to over embarrass those councillors who voted en-masse for all these ell conceived extravagances
£30000 is a cheap way of letting the voters see and hear how the Cabinet conducts its business in public. And if the message is not getting through to the target audience the council should be looking at its woeful "marketing" - do not shot the messenger!
Sunday 9th July 2017 at 4:56 pm
I wouldn't be too quick to criticise local government on this. Central government have encouraged open democracy and transparency for years. It isn't really local governments fault if they are pushed to do this sort of thing but nobody watches.
Manuel Golding
Monday 10th July 2017 at 1:06 pm
Local government, in this instance Cheshire East Council, is entirely to blame for its rampant wastage of its limited resources.
Monday 10th July 2017 at 4:51 pm
Manuel, you seem to want openness so you can have your opinion on local government finance but aren't keen on the mechanisms that bring the facts to you? Sounds odd to me.
Manuel Golding
Tuesday 11th July 2017 at 4:06 pm
John, do tell me what are "the mechanisms that bring the facts" to me?
I'm more than happy to learn so please enlighten me. Thanks in anticipation.
Tuesday 11th July 2017 at 5:08 pm
A fact is a thing that's known to be true, the mechanism is how the fact reaches you. In this case the mechanism could be you attending the meeting, or reading the minutes, or watching the meeting online. Don't miss out the facts and just read opinions, that's generally someone else trying to get you to think the same as them.
Manuel Golding
Tuesday 11th July 2017 at 11:00 pm
I do and have done many times.
Your next point?
Richard Bullock
Wednesday 12th July 2017 at 8:22 am
I don't think many would criticise the council for the initiative of putting videos of meetings online. Even if very few watch it, some people obviously have, and with a bit more publicity, I'm sure the viewership figures would be higher.

But the question remains as to just how have they managed to spend £30,000 on videoing just 12 cabinet meetings? £2,500 per meeting! For that money, you could employ someone full-time on average wage, get top-of-the-range video editing software and still have a couple of grand to spend on video equipment. And videoing and editing 12 meetings is not exactly requiring a full time position, surely.

I'm sure it could be done for vastly less. Just what have they spent £30,000 on?
Antony Redfern
Wednesday 12th July 2017 at 11:46 am
Hi Richard - you'll find that's the going rate for webcasting from providers for mics/camera rental and their service. The alternative you suggest of simply videoing the meeting and loading it onto Youtube (for example) might seem like a better/cheaper option, but when others try this results tend to look amateurish and without the ability to find agenda items of interest, it's not very user friendly.

The more pertinent question is why the obsession with video? surely it's what people say that matters, not what they look like while they are saying it. We set up Audiominutes so councils can audio webcast themselves, making their meetings more accessible to the public without the need for additional staff members or separate websites.