Councillors have criticised the new North Yorkshire Council after it confirmed that not all of its meetings will be live streamed online.
The authority was created on Saturday and replaced the seven district and borough councils as well as North Yorkshire County Council.
But it is the largest council area in England, spanning over 3,000 square miles with most of its meeting taking place at County Hall in Northallerton.
During the covid pandemic, the government passed legislation to allow council business to continue online. Meetings took place on apps like Microsoft Teams and were live streamed for residents to watch on YouTube.
Since pandemic restrictions were lifted, Harrogate Borough Council continued to live stream all of its meetings whereas North Yorkshire County Council only routinely live streamed executive and full council meetings.
Following a question by a councillor, a senior officer at the new council confirmed in an email that the previous North Yorkshire County Council live streaming arrangement will continue.
This means that at the moment, the only chance to see what is happening in a host of other meetings, including those concerning public health, education and transport, residents will have to travel to Northallerton.
However, meetings that will be held in Harrogate, such as the planning committee, licensing committee and area constituency committee, will be streamed using equipment bought by Harrogate Borough Council.
The email concludes by saying the new council is reviewing “what is possible and practicable” regarding live streaming meetings in the future.
Three-hour round trip
From some parts of Craven it’s a three-hour round trip to County Hall in Northallerton.
Andy Brown, Green Party councillor for Aire Valley, said residents should not be expected to travel to Northallerton to “watch democracy in action.”
He added: “Working online can save hours of travelling and make the meeting more efficient. It is crazy that I am travelling for 90 minutes to attend meetings that could be done on line. It is wrong that meetings which could be steamed into the homes of every interested member of the public are not conducted as openly as possible.”
Andy Solloway, Independent councillor for Skipton West & West Craven said: “The outgoing Craven District Council have been recording meetings for years, and livestreaming them, especially decision making ones, would be a good thing for local democracy and for public participation and engagement.
Arnold Warneken, Green Party councillor for Ouseburn, also said he was in favour of the council live streaming all of its meetings.
“Someone should be able to open their laptop in their house and see what the council is up to. Sometimes it’s like watching paint dry but you can have it on in background. That is transparency and engagement.
“The meetings should all be streamed if we’re serious about carbon and the impact we make ourselves. There’s a lot of support for it.”
What the council says
North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for democratic services, Cllr David Chance, said: “We are committed to ensuring that the new North Yorkshire Council has local communities at its heart, despite serving such a vast area across the county.
“The online streaming of council meetings has been an important way of making sure that access is available as widely as possible to both councillors and members of the public.
“Meetings of full council and the executive will be routinely streamed online, and we will continue to record and broadcast planning and licensing meetings that were previously overseen by district and borough councils.
“We will consider broadcasting or recording other meetings when there is a strong public interest or where there are facilities in place that enable it to be readily done.
“The new council is the third largest in the country, and now oversees services that were previously delivered by eight authorities in North Yorkshire. There are therefore a significant number of meetings each year, which is in the region of 200.
“We are reviewing what is possible and practicable regarding the recording and broadcasting of meetings, taking into account the facilities which are available across the county, the IT and democratic support that is needed as well as investment in IT infrastructure.”
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