ROSS-ON-WYE Town Council is to trial video recording its meetings, members decided at their meeting on Monday.

The councillors debated the possibility of live streaming and recording of full council meetings. Councillor Daniel Lister pointed out that technology had evolved significantly in recent years and added that live streaming was now possible with little effort.

“Once the settings have been established, it only requires the watchful eyes of one person to monitor the output to ensure it is running smoothly and that it has not stopped or lost connectivity. It would automatically upload itself to the internet.

“This is more beneficial as recording the meeting and processing it before uploading it, would probably create more work for the officers of this council.”

Cllr Chris Bartrum said: “I think we should investigate live streaming and recording of our meetings. The clincher for me is that Ledbury Town Council seem to be ahead of us!

“We cannot allow Ledbury to appear to be a more go-ahead, progressive and switched-on town council than us.”

Cllr Louis Stark reminded the council that if it intends looking at hybrid meetings in future, where members can attend remotely, then the recording of meeting should be combined with this project.

“Aside from trialling the recording scheme, we should not take it any further until hybrid meetings are properly explored,” Cllr Stark said.

Cllr Milly Boylan said that the recording of meetings could generate more interest in what the council does, and added: “I believe that the live streaming of meetings will enable people to get more involved in the town if they can see and hear what goes on. It will also ensure a much healthier interaction between members.”

Cllr Ed O’Driscoll said that he agreed with the suggestion to wait until the council decides what it is doing in respect of hybrid meetings.

Cllr O’Driscoll added that Herefordshire Council already uses live hybrid meeting technology and added: “It goes out without editing, warts and all. We must make sure we are on top of our game if we are to adopt this proposal.”

Cllr Lindon Delves reminded the council that at the annual meeting, which was live streamed on social media, that there were issues with sound quality.

Carla Boyles, town clerk, told members that the council has a basic kit to enable live streaming and recording of meetings, however without adaptations there could be issues surrounding sound quality, but these could be resolved during the trial period.

The council unanimously voted to trial recording meetings from April next year.