This request was emailed to all 4 Ward 4 Councillors.

Cllr Stewart Miller
Cllr Alan Lafferty
Cllr Annette Ireland
Cllr David MacDonald

all replies will be posted.

Hi

As my Councillor and as your constituent living in Ward 4, I would appreciate if you could raise the matter of the Webcasting of all Council meetings at the next Full Council meeting on 12 September 2018.

I would ask that you submit a motion to the meeting to enable all Council meetings held after this Full council Meeting, to be made available via Webcast.

The equipment/personnel are in place etc. There should be no reason why all future Cabinet meetings should not be made available via Webcast.

Attending Council meetings in the Public Gallery is not a particularly illuminating experience.

The majority of Councillors and officials mumble and do not speak into their microphones(That is if they switch them on).

Most of the time they are inaudible to those sitting in the Public Gallery.

A lot of the seats/desks face away from the Public Gallery. You can only see Councillors/officials backs.

At the last Audit & Scrutiny Committee meeting on 16 August, the whole Committee turned their backs on the Residents/Council Tax Payers sitting in the Public Gallery. You could not see their faces or see/hear what they were saying.

I think that says it all.


These meetings should be held for the convenience of East Renfrewshire Council Residents/Tax Payers, not for the convenience of Councillors.


It is time all these meetings are made available via Webcast.

A worrying change has been made(without consultation) regarding Councillors' commitment to Webcasting -

14 August 2018 - Erc Webcast page -

'East Renfrewshire Council is committed to providing residents with a transparent and accessible decision-making process.

Council meetings, where decisons on both strategic and local issues are made, will now be webcast.

You will now be able to see how decisions which affect you and your community are reached, without having to attend meetings in person.'

If ERC is committed to above , then the decision regarding live webcast of these meetings has already been made.

As at 29 August 2018 - Erc Webcast page -

'Welcome to the East Renfrewshire Council webcast homepage.

The Council is committed to making its decision making processes open and transparent.

As part of this commitment, meetings of the full Council are webcast.

Recent and upcoming webcasts are displayed in the Webcast overview panel to the right of this page.

To view a webcast, click on the title and the webcast will begin automatically.'

I would appreciate your commitment to the Webcasting of all Councill meetings and if you would raise this matter as requested.

Thanks

Thanks to Cllr Miller for his reply -

----Original message----
From : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Date : 01/09/2018 - 11:22 (GMTST)
Subject : Re: Webcasting of ALL Council Meetings

Thank you once again for your correspondence and I note all you write

As you have written to me on several occasions on this issue, I have tried to find out more about it

In speaking to council officers, they tell me with the system we have, it takes two people to operate it, therefore if we were to Web cast every committee meeting, we would need to either have to employ an extra member of staff or redeploy an existing member of staff, which would also have cost implications.

Nevertheless, if that is what local people wanted, I would be quite happy to ask for it and to that end, I have recently consulted with quite a number of residents as to whether they thought this would represent good value for their Council tax and not a single person agrees.

Therefore I am not going to push for something that has a cost implication with very little or no demand

But, on your behalf, I will speak to the administration Cllrs to ask if there is a demand in others areas of the Council

As to your criticism of the seating arrangements of the Audit and Scrutiny Committee, I'm told this was agreed some years ago due to complaints from residents who were in attendance who thought it was better to hear from, and see the faces of those people giving evidence to the committee rathe than the committee themselves and, frankly, I quite agree with that therefore I see no reason to change

In conclusion, I have found no demand to spend Council tax payers money on Web casting committee meetings but I will ask others if there is a demand elsewhere

Kind regards
Stewart

Would appear to be Cllr Miller's final response -

----Original message----
From : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Date : 01/09/2018 - 15:56 (GMTST)
Subject : Re: Webcasting of ALL Council Meetings

Yet again, thank you for your correspondence and I was under the impression I had made my position quite clear and I will not be entering into any further dialogue on this issue

But I will answer two specific points.

In relation to all your points about why all these committee meetings are held, the answer is it is because the council have a statutory duty to do so.

As mentioned, the people I have asked as to whether they would wish to view every committee webcast and were happy with any cost implications, every person said no. Everyone had their own reasons for their opinion and I didn't ask them

Once again, thank you for your email and I will not be responding to anything further on this issue

Kind regards
Stewart

Who does he think he is, he will not talk to you anymore.

Who did he ask, his coos.

What cost implications, one punter to switch it on and it works automatically all by itself.