Boost to audio and video at meetings
Council set to improve the quality at debates
The Royal Borough is set to improve the visual and audio quality of hybrid meetings, a lead member has announced.
It comes after almost a year of audio issues for those attending remotely due to the acoustics of some buildings, such as Maidenhead Town Hall, since face-to-face debates returned last year.
At the disability and inclusion forum on Monday, residents, officers, and councillors met in-person for the first time since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.
Decision-making bodies such as planning panels, cabinet
and full council have been required by law to meet inperson since May last year.
This was due to the government removing a temporary measure to allow decisions to be made virtually to aide social distancing.
Most non-decision making bodies - such as the disability and inclusion forum, the Maidenhead and Windsor town forums and a select number of overview and scrutiny panels – have continued to meet virtually.
However, at the hybrid meeting of the disability and inclusion forum, issues with the audio and visual quality for those watching via YouTube meant that those attending virtually struggled to hear what was being said.
Attending remotely, Cllr Gurch Singh (Lib Dem, St Marys), said: “It’s very difficult to hear what’s going on; the sound quality is absolutely awful on this side.
“Normally I’m in the room
listening, but I’m finding it very, very difficult to hear what’s going on, so I just wanted to see for future meetings if there’s anything we can do about this.
“Obviously, this is a disability and inclusion forum, and some of the people who are involved in these meetings will struggle to hear at the best of times.”
Also appearing via Zoom, Cllr Samantha Rayner (Con, Eton & Castle) agreed with Cllr Singh on the issue of audio and visual quality.
“Now we have these hybrid meetings, I think it’s really important that we get this right,” said Cllr Rayner.
“The democratic services team are working on a project [and] I’m hoping that we can implement it very soon.
“But now we’ve found this new way of working, and we like the hybrid way of working, we’ve got to get it right for our residents, especially, as you say, for this type of meeting when we’re discussing inclusivity and disability [issues].”