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Edinburgh Reporter

Edinburgh council may stop broadcasting some meetings online to save money

Edinburgh council may stop broadcasting some meetings online under plans city officers say would save around £6,000 a year. Some committees have been broadcast live since 2012, with recordings published on the council website. And the covid lockdown led to most publicly-open committees being broadcast live. Now, officers are asking councillors to approve the webcasting of three committees to be stopped, in hopes of saving around £6,000 per year. The Planning Local Review Body, the Consultative Committee with Parents and the Pentland Hills Regional Park Joint Committee would cease to be broadcast. This would mark a return to close to pre-Covid arrangements, though broadcasts of the Traffic Regulation Orders Sub-Committee and the Edinburgh City Region Joint Deal committee would continue. And, under proposals by officers, some internal and restricted meetings would stop being recorded with the webcasting system, with recordings instead being made with Teams. The same report also asks councillors to make a decision on whether to start recording private meetings, as well as the private portions of public meetings. Officers have recommended that councillors vote against it, over fears that they would be open to subject access requests and may be asked for in court proceedings. They say that exposure could conflict with the city's 'risk-averse' appetite, and instead want to see more detailed notes of private meetings kept. The request came after councillors raised concerns about the level of detail in minutes produced from private meetings. If recordings of meetings began, most recordings would only be retained until a copy of minutes was agreed. Officers suggest that the recording could be carried out either through the webcasting system – which could incur additional costs – or through Microsoft Teams. They say that using the webcasting system would incur additional costs, and could see uploads of the public portions of meetings significantly delayed. Using Microsoft Teams would produce lower quality recordings, but they say this would not be an issue due to the fact that the recordings would not be intended for publication. By Joseph Sullivan Local Democracy Reporter Like this: Like Related