Scarborough Council meetings could be streamed live on Facebook or Youtube

Currently, meetings of the full council, cabinet and planning committee are streamed on the authority’s website via the Public-i system.

The council’s contract with Public-i is coming to an end and new ways of streaming the meetings have been examined.

A report prepared for the cabinet member of legal, democratic and governance, Cllr Tony Randerson, shows that webcasting the meetings and archiving them on the website costs just under £16,000 a year.

It is now proposed that the council looks to stream meetings on Facebook or Youtube, which would involve a one-off cost of £6,530 for items including cameras and a roving microphone.

The report adds that while the change would allow the council to store unlimited meetings to be viewed again and improve the picture quality the cameras would be fixed and not look at the person speaking as is currently the case.

Figures show that the webcasts of meetings have proved popular.

The report states: “As at the end of October 2019, there have been 16,516 views of the council’s webcasts amounting to a total length of viewing of 5,478.9 hours.

“The total number of visits for the same period was 30,941. Of this total about 32% (9,900 views) were internal.

“The meeting with the highest number of views (more than three times the second highest) was the full council meeting held on 9 January 2017 when members considered the proposed demolition of the Futurist Theatre and adjoining buildings and stabilisation of the cliff.

“This meeting attracted a total of 1,545 views (1,018 live and 527 archive), and 5,018 visits.

“The total length of viewing for this meeting was 965 hours, 33 minutes. About 13% of the views of that webcast were internal.”

Under the changes, which would come into effect in May 2020, all public council meetings held in the main council chamber would be streamed online.

Cllr Randerson will be asked to approve the payments to buy the new equipment and to not renew the contract with Public-i on Monday (23rd).