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Hyperlocal in the UK

Hyperlocal innovation: Google hangout for council reporting

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parliament
Old style: Cameras keeping an eye on proceedings. Picture: UK Parliament on Flickr.

Google hangout – the video conference style service available on the Google + platform – may well have changed the way you do team meetings if you work in a distributed way as we do here at Talk About Local.

But how about for broadcasting your local council meeting? In an ambitious initiative, three bloggers at Lightmoor Life have recently done just that. Using multiple laptops they were able to stream the council chamber from different angles – even managing to hurriedly apply live captions to helpfully point out who’s who and their political allegiances etc.

It’s a fascinating example of what can be achieved with some goodwill between a hyperlocal and the local council – how refreshing after all the #daftarrest nonsense which saw Jacqui Thompson arrested for filming Carmarthensire Council.

Nigel Newman, head of communications at Telford and Wrekin Council said they had seen the offer of filming as an opportunity to engage with with more people locally and instead of the usual one or two members of the public, the stream was viewed by 200 people on the night and a further 90 in the immediate few days following.

The way people consume information is changing. Some councils have spent hundreds and thousands of pounds on streaming which no-one watches so when members of the community came forward and offered, rather than find reasons we couldn’t, we saw it as a great opportunity.

And the council actively assisted in the broadcast by carrying out tests of the equipment beforehand, promoting the activity via the official website and twitter stream and even providing sheets detailing the councillors names and other information allowing for the quick identification needed in caption writing.

In the video clip below, recorded during last night’s Out Of Hours Hyperlocal session (yes, that was on Google + too) Mark McC describes how they did they it at about 58mins.

* I was particularly interested to hear about this experience at this point because I’m currently seeking permission to film at my local council in Richmondshire, North Yorkshire and am preparing a briefing note for councillors about the issue. If you’ve any experience in this, I’d love to hear from you via the comments below or email sarah@talkaboutlocal.org.

Sarah Hartley

Sarah Hartley

Sarah Hartley

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Comments

  1. I was interested in recording some audioboo pieces at the February Full Council meeting of Colchester Borough Council. The agenda included a named vote where Cllrs were voting on a 1.5% rise to their allowance.

    I was asked by a Council Officer to stop recording the audio and taken outside to explain why this isn’t allowed. I was told that recording was not allowed in the Constitution for the Council.

    I explained a little more about the directives from the Department for Communities and Local Government, but the response was firm: no recording.

    The following week the Borough Council published the agenda for the March Cabinet meeting. This included a report from the Tech Task and Finish Group. The Group claims that is has looked at the cost of “webcasting” meetings. This was quoted at £30,000 per year, and was ruled out.

    http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2013/02/21/tweeting-cllrs-ticked-off/

    I wrote to Colchester Borough back in March 2012, offering to record and publish audio for Full Council for £250 a month. Over a year later and I still haven’t received an acknowledgement.

    The Task and Finish Group concluded by recommending maintaining the policy of not allowing residents to record meetings, without the permission of all Cllrs. A separate side issue was a recommendation that Cllrs be prevented from using social media whilst in meetings.

    I formally asked permission to record audio for the Cabinet meeting that was due to discuss and vote on the Report. This was granted on the strict terms of a one off licence. The Borough Council also recorded the meeting, but has declined to publish the content.

    http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2013/03/06/cbc-shitstorm-softened/

    I published the complete file at no cost over here:

    https://soundcloud.com/jason-14-2/colchester-borough-council

    Cabinet passed the ban on recording and the use of social media to Full Council. This is now due to be voted on 20th March. Rather than seek permission of all 60 Cllrs to record this meeting, I asked the Council if it would officially record the audio and share this content. The response wasn’t very favourable.

    On a Town Council basis, I have also asked for permission to record Wivenhoe Town Council meetings. This was denied by the Town Clerk. The reason given was:

    “Local authority means a county council in England, a district council or a London borough council which is operating executive arrangements in accordance with Part 1A of the 2000 Act. Town and Parish Councils operate on a different tier of Government. The Town Council’s Standing Orders do not permit recordings.”

    It seems that Parish and Town Councils slip underneath the radar for the guidance given by the DCLG.

  2. Hi Jason, thanks so much for adding your experience. It really is hard to fathom tbh. I know I come at this from a particular standpoint but it is difficult to understand what the fear is. On the briefing doc. I’m preparing, I’ve attempted to identify risks and so far have come up with three; lack of continuity of service due to it being volunteers doing it on and as and when basis, failure of equipment/connectivity and finally, fear of saying something inappropriate. I wonder if I’ve identified the correct things. Your experience seems to suggest a preference for secrecy. Can this be true in this day and age? If so, why?

  3. The irony here is that I truly believe that there is no secrecy. Sure, local authorities make cock ups, but I have yet to see anything in Colchester that suggests organisational corruption. By giving the impression of not being open only leads to conspiracy theories about what a council might be trying to hide. The truth is that there is really nothing to hide, apart from some incredibly dull and boring meetings.

    The lack of continuity from a voluntary perspective is valid. But if the recordings were sanctioned as a stand alone service provided by hyperlocals, and not as an official Council facility, then the odd missed meeting may be expected.

    The alternative would be to pay for the service – it is poor that I haven’t received a reply from my pitch, twelve months after formally submitting it to the Communications Manager. If a contract was in place, then the continuity would be covered.

    Tech gear may fail, but then a Clerk recording the minutes might be taken ill. In my experience it is most unlikely.

    The tech myths of recording a meeting need to be addressed. I personally see no point in going down the video route. Cost and purpose don’t justify this. Recording audio is incredibly simple. You place a £79 Zoom device on the table in the Chamber. Most council Chambers will be amplified anyway. You press record, and then collect it at the end. You then upload the complete file from start to finish to Soundcloud for free. No editing is needed.

    Fear of saying something inappropriate is a political issue, and not one for transparency and openess. If you put yourself up for public service then you should expect your public comments to be on the record. The minutes for council meetings don’t reflect the actual experience. They are not verbatim and are diluted down to an even duller level.

    Councils are bending over backwards to engage [URGH] with residents. Offering a recording of what was said is just one way of opening up the process.

  4. Meanwhile, Wivenhoe Town Council refuses to publish the Agenda of public Town Council meetings on its website. Hard copies are instead placed on the Town Council noticeboard.

    The reason given?

    It has always been done this way…

  5. I really applaud the enterprise of our colleagues from Lightmoor Life, and the willingness of Telford and Wrekin and Council to open themselves up in this way. What ARE councils frightened of? I wrote about some of this some time ago in this post for the Journalism Foundation http://www.thejournalismfoundation.com/2012/03/the-hyperlocal-jeremy-paxmans-are-out-there-we-just-need-to-find-them/

    Personally I’d be reluctant to use Google+ Hangouts for this until Google start giving the broadcaster some tools to be able to monitor the stream quality and garner feedback. The presence of these tools are the reason I use Bambuser, but, as Mark from Lightmoor has pointed out, unless you use expensive hardware solutions, that can limit you to one camera.

  6. In situations where recording is not allowed, I’m wondering what would happen if people came into a council meeting with a stenographer transcribing the entire meeting? (I’m seeing a Mark Thomas style intervention here)

  7. Thanks for all the insights, really interesting. I take your point John about the tools – the proposal I’ve put forward to my local council would mean me doing it in the same way you do filming at events because there’s likely to only be me or me plus one ever available to do it. Top marks to Lightmoor though – really impressed with that. I prepared the briefing notice for the councillors – the link is here if that’s useful to anyone else and thanks again to Mark McC for the picture.
    http://richmond.n0tice.com/report/206632/councillors-to-consider-filming-request-on-wednesday#.UUhNqhlQ3f4

  8. That’s a great briefing Sarah. It has already raised some interest – and opened up possibilities – from some Cllrs here in Colchester.

    I think that for many Cllrs the tech opportunities just aren’t known. The ease of sharing content from meetings needs to be explained. Once the dark art has been opened up, hopefully they should embrace the potential.

    An update from Colchester: the Borough Council has agreed to record the Full Council meeting itself on 20 March. This is where the proposed banning of residents recording meetings is being debated.

    The Council has no plans to make available this recording though.

    Which begs the question – why bother?

    http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2013/03/20/democracy-d-day-yeah-yeah/

  9. Thanks for the update Jason. It’s been good to hear from the Colchester folk on Twitter to following your contacts. Keep your fingers crossed today, hoping to hear back from the Richmondshire councillors.

  10. After over an hour and a half of debate on Wednesday, Colchester Borough Council voted to allow residents to record meetings. The Council will also record the audio of Full Council itself, and publish these on the Council website.

    The related issue of allowing Cllrs to tweet in meetings however wasn’t so open. The vote went 29 – 22 in favour of banning Cllrs from tweeting in the Chamber. It is unenforceable – Cllrs were already tweeting from the Chamber during the next agenda item:

    http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2013/03/21/evolution-of-the-political-species/

  11. Thanks Jason and well done on the recording. I’ve a couple of updates on this too. First, my local councillors are now referring the request onto a working party after raising concerns about the suitability of the chamber. Not really sure what that could mean so have asked for further information and also suggested audio recording as an interim measure. More detail here: http://richmondnoticeboard.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/filming-request-referred-to-working-party/

    Secondly, I gave a presentation to staff at the Communities and Local Government department this week and this topic inevitably arose. The view there was that the secretary of state strongly supports the opening up of councils to people like us and that people who are knocked back should write to their local MP asking them to raise the issue with the department.