Council asked to consider allowing meetings to be recorded

THE LEADER of Greenwich Council has been asked to consider allowing members of the public to record council meetings.

Greenwich Council’s constitution forbids the recording of council meetings without the prior consent of the Mayor, who chairs full council meetings, in consultation with the Chief Executive.

Councillor Nigel Fletcher (Conservative, Eltham North) said at Wednesday night’s full council meeting that this was “putting barriers in the way of members of the public taking an interest in proceedings in this chamber.”

He asked the Leader of the Council if the council could “look at changing the constitution to remove this obstacle.”

Councillor Chris Roberts replied: “Given my well known love of all things technological and the anti-social network sites… That’s obviously something for the council to consider. If that’s what it wants to consider, we will do so.”

Cllr Roberts also said in a written answer that “we have received no recent requests to record the proceedings in the Council Chamber.”

Greenwich.co.uk made a formal request to Greenwich Council in March 2011 to record a council meeting but permission was declined.

The government wrote to all local authorities in February 2011 encouraging them to allow meetings to be recorded.

“The public should rightly expect that elected representatives who have put themselves up for public office be prepared for their decisions to be as transparent as possible and welcome a direct line of communication to their electorate,” the letter from the then local government minister stated.