Readers of Ferret will probably be aware that Independent Hemsworth Town Council agreed to stream live, full Town Council meetings via zoom, last year.
That’s good you may be thinking and yes Ferret agrees, although the sound leaves a lot to be desired at times and Hemsworth Town Council don’t appear to have made any real effort to address this problem for some reason.
However what they didn’t agreed to do is live stream via zoom, is it’s full committee meetings.
Some readers may not realise the importance and significance of this.
These committees are not sub-committees that only make recommendations and report back to the full Town Council meeting or relevant committee meeting, for them to make any decisions on whatever they have reported back on and this is the real issue.
Hemsworth Town Council delegates certain areas of responsibilities to committees:
- The Leisure and recreation committee
- The Finance committee
- The Policy and Planning committee
These committees have their own budgets and areas of responsibility that they make their decisions on, without any further approval being required by the full Town Council so long as they remain within their remits.
You may have noticed that minutes from these meetings appear on the Town Council Meeting agenda but they are on that agenda for information purposes only and not for approval.
In effect these committees make decisions for the Town Council, which of course is us but they have not been included in decision to live stream via zoom to see the decision making process in action.
In reality this means more decisions are being made that are not being streamed by zoom than are.
We have also seen instances where the minutes of meetings that have been recorded have not agreed with the actual recording of the meeting and this is a very serious issue.
So Hemsworth Town Council:
- Will you review your policy on the streaming of Town Council meetings to include all Committees with their own budgets and areas of responsibility?
- Will you post the zoom meeting recordings alongside the relevant meeting minutes?
- Will you agree to the above?
- If not why not?
Ferret believes this community deserves no less than your full agreement to comply with your claims of Openness, Honesty and Transparency.