Face-to-face meetings are coming back

Hybridformatafterelections

It will be a new administration which meets face-to-face for the first time, more than two years after Covid-19 shut West Lothian’s council chambers.

The council executive agreed to delay the introduction of hybrid meetings until a meeting of the education executive and council executive on May 31 – after the local elections on May 5.

Council IT officers presented papers to the meeting last Tuesday proposing introducing the hybrid meetings starting on April 19.

This would have made the executive meeting of that day the first since the week before the lockdown on March 23, 2020.

However, Tory group leader Councillor Damian Doran-Timson suggested it would be more practical training-wise and cost effective to wait until the new council was elected rather than training those in the existing administration who, like Provost Tom Kerr, have announced they are standing down.

Chairing the executive, Labour group leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick said there was no party whip on the issue and asked councillors’ views.

SNP depute group leader Frank Anderson agreed that it would be better to wait until the new council was in place.

Chief executive Graham Hope suggested that the first meeting of the new council would likely “be rather complex” and it was “probably not advisable” to make that the first under the new rules.”

A new £150,000 audio visual system has been installed in the chamber to replace the existing audio system.

There have been delays in sourcing components because of worldwide shortages and shipping difficulties as a result of the pandemic.

The hope had been to have the hybrid meetings up and running before Christmas.

The agreement for the new hybrid meetings detail no more than two representatives from each group attending in person at future meetings, with others attending on screen and also able to vote through the new system.