Public Meetings at Bromley Council - Time for Live Streaming

Bromley Council's General Purposes and Licensing Committee is due to meet on 3 November and one of the items on the agenda is whether council meetings should be live streamed and/or recorded for viewing at a later date. The Lib Dems believe Bromley should embrace the opportunity to let residents see their council in action, joining the 85% of other London councils who already do so.

The Council Report provided in advance of the meeting lists 21 reasons NOT to allow live streaming compared to 4 reasons in favour. This is worrying. We hope the councillors attending this committee will consider the overwhelming importance of making our democratic process open to all residents. Transparency, open government and scrutiny are vital, building trust between the public and local people they are elected to represent.

The reasons given against the live streaming include:

• "There is little evidence of widespread demand for live-streaming" - there is minimal live streaming available, e.g. only ceremonial meetings for the current year are online. And the recordings of these meetings are poorly advertised.
• "Members and officers may feel more constrained in expressing themselves in a situation where their comments are live-streamed" - it may actually encourage some of the less active councillors to participate in meetings.

plus a range of other issues concerning cost (which is minimal), technology and governance issues - you can see the full list here.  

We hope all members of the committee will embrace this opportunity and finally make council meetings accessible to residents.