The Department for Communities and Local Government has heavy
criticised Wigan Council’s failure to record and publish its council meetings. In a major setback for Lord Smith’s policy to ban council
meetings being digitally recorded for the public, the government is set to overrule the
Labour leaders ban and to allow recording in all Council meetings.
In its report The Department for Communities and Local
Government, describes a couple of incidents (including Wigan Councils actions
in calling the police to a council meeting) ‘we understand that on the 24 April
2014 police officers were called to effect the removal from a Wigan council
meeting of a councillor on the grounds that he was using social media during
the meeting’ it went on to say; ‘whilst
the great majority of councils already allow persons attending an open meeting
to use social and digital media for reporting the meeting, there are examples
where attempts have been made to prevent such reporting to the detriment of
effective local democracy and of ensuring full transparency and accountability
in step with the digital world of today.’
Describing such actions including Wigan Councils it said ‘such
situations are clearly indefensible and are deeply damaging to public
confidence in our democratic processes’ It plans to legislation to allow the
legality of using social and digital media, including filming, to report any
open meeting of a local government body.
‘The Regulations can therefore be confidently expected to
put an end to any incidents such as those described above arising in future.
The need for the Regulations to be in force at the earliest opportunity is
therefore, in the Government's view, unarguable’
So it looks like the next time the police are called to a
Council meeting it might be Lord Smith escorted from the building….
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