New webcasting equipment agreed by Arun

The full council at its meeting on Wednesday, March 13, agreed to borrow £61,000 for new touchscreens, computer monitors, audio and visual equipment, and upgrading to Windows 11.

Members said the council needed the new equipment to be more transparent and accessible to the public, and better systems would reduce council officer time setting up the webcast for each meeting.

The current equipment is around 10 years old, being first used in 2014 for a planning committee meeting, but was not brought into general use until 2019.

Now, the council livestreams, or webcasts, all of its committee meetings open to the public from the Arun Civic Centre, Littlehampton, storing recordings of the meetings for up to a year before they are deleted.

The council will also renew its contract for webcasting and maintenance with Hampshire County Council for £18,000.

Shaun Gunner (Con, Rustington East) said the council could be borrowing the money over a 20 year period, longer than they would be using the new equipment the money would pay for, saying it was ‘a bit weird’.

Martin Lury (LDem, Bersted) said the existing system is ‘failing’ and it is ‘unfair’ on council staff and their time to keep using it, adding it is ‘vital’ for the planning committee to have recorded meetings.

He said: “None of us likes spending money unless we have to and I think in this case, in terms of transparency for the public, we have to spend it.”

According to a report to full council outlining options for new equipment, all three options taken were listed as ‘urgent’, as the manufacturer had stopped supporting the systems that run the cameras and microphones.

The report also said the 14 existing computer monitors were using analogue instead of digital connections, with the new monitors to have a 13 inch screen and HDMI connections.

Other options not pursued by the council included new audio/visual equipment for £24,000 so it could webcast meetings from other committee rooms in the civic centre, and £50,000 to £100,000 for a new microphone system.

It also considered paying £2,750 per meeting to outsource webcasting if the system did go down.