Councillors have criticised North Yorkshire Council after it confirmed not all meetings will be live streamed online.
North Yorkshire Council replaced the seven district and borough councils, including Harrogate, as well as North Yorkshire County Council on Saturday.
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 such as 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.
County Hall in Northallerton
This means that at the moment, the only chance residents will get to see what is happening in a host of other meetings, including those concerning public health, education and transport, is if they travel to Northallerton.
However, meetings in Harrogate, such as planning committee, licensing committee and area constituency committee, will be streamed using equipment bought by Harrogate Borough Council.
But they will no longer include developments affecting Ripon, Masham and Pateley Bridge as meetings in Harrogate will cover the Harrogate and Knaresborough parliamentary constituency.
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
In some parts of Craven such as Ingleton or Bentham it’s a three-hour round trip to County Hall.
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 online.
“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 and West Craven said:
“The outgoing Craven District Council have been recording meetings for years, and live streaming them, especially decision making ones, would be a good thing for local democracy and for public participation and engagement.”
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Arnold Warneken, Green Party councillor for Ouseburn, also said he was in favour of the council live streaming all 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:
Nearly half of Harrogate council meetings cancelled in November“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.”
A lack of Harrogate Borough Council business has led to nearly half of meetings being cancelled this past month.
The authority will be abolished in four months time and replaced by North Yorkshire Council.
The cancellation of so many meetings raises questions over how effective the council will be in its final days.
It had been due to hold 13 meetings in November — not including informal meetings — which included senior cabinet member meetings and a planning committee.
However, five of those meetings were cancelled. Last week the council did not hold a single meeting.
Just three public meetings were streamed live onto the council’s YouTube in November.
This included a cabinet meeting, where senior councillors made a key decision over the progress of three strategic housing sites.
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The Stray Ferret asked the borough council why so many meetings had been cancelled and why so few meetings had been streamed for the public to watch.
A council spokesperson said:
“Provisional dates for meetings are added to the calendar at the start of the municipal year.
“Should these not be required, as there are no items to bring to said meeting, then they are cancelled.”
The authority is due to hold 12 meetings in December—- one of which has already been cancelled.