OnTheWight has for years, as regular readers will know, been actively encouraging greater transparency at the Isle of Wight council. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve gained some small advances.
One notable example was to get the release of the details showing where they’d been spending tax-payers’ money.
There had been a general guidance given by Eric Pickles MP for councils to publish the details, if the invoice value was over £500. His enthusiasm for the idea didn’t appear to be shared by the Isle of Wight council.
Bearing fruit
Our (mostly) patient campaign finally bore fruit enabling OnTheWight to, just two days later, release the Armchair Auditor Website for the Isle of Wight, after having been developing it with Wightgeek in preparation.
With this tool, residents of the Island were, for the first time, able to easily examine where the council was spending their money.
Independents promised increased openness
Since the Independents gained control, increased openness at Isle of Wight council is looking more promising.
In their pre-election prospectus, “A Framework for Change” they publicly committed to The Bell Principles, the first of which is :-
We will abide wholeheartedly by the spirit and letter of the Seven Principles of Public Life set out by Lord Nolan in 1995: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
In the words of the Island Independents in their document:-
“Make decisions transparently and openly at every stage and level of the political process, enabling people to see how decisions are made and the evidence on which they are based.”
Making council meetings more accessible: Stage 1
We at OnTheWight (or VentnorBlog as we were then) thought it was important that Island residents were able to find out what was being discussed at IW council meetings.
So in February 2007, we started providing live, as-it-happens coverage of council meetings, quite probably for the first time in the UK.
At that time, the County Press used to report the outcomes of council meetings after a long delay, some times a week later.
Making council meetings more accessible: Stage 2
When we first proposed that OnTheWight be able to recording Full Council and Cabinet meetings, we understand officers held up resistance internally. If that did occur, it was overcome, at least partially by the then-Conservative leadership.
The outcome was that OnTheWight was able to carry out audio records of those meetings – but on the proviso that we made an separate request to the Chair before each meeting and that we could only use these recordings for our own notes, ie not put them out through OnTheWight, to the public.
We took what we could get at the time.
Indies: ‘Agreement in principle’ to live broadcasts
Happily, it appears that the Independents have responded favourably to OnTheWight‘s requests to live broadcast the Full Council and Cabinet meetings.
OnTheWight hears from Cllr Jonathan Bacon, who is now responsible for constitutional matters at the Isle of Wight council, that agreement has been reached with council officers that a live audio broadcast can occur. The IT department are now looking at how they’re going to achieve it.
This will bring IWC closer into step with progressive councils, such as Hampshire CC, who recently held their first public meeting with a live video stream, enabling anyone to watch and listen to what happened.
Eric Pickles MP: The public can video record meetings
At the tail end of last week, Eric Pickles’s department published a guide for UK citizens, teaching them how to go about taking their own video cameras into council meetings, to record them.
After a long time of people trying to do this previously, only to become blocked by councils claiming to be “Transparent”.
Inspirational examples around the UK
There have been some inspirational examples like Lightmoor Life who simply used the built in cameras on their laptops to do a live broadcasts of the Telford & Wrekin council meetings. They’ve even done a three camera shoot (watch it), just using their laptops and Google Hangouts.
Mr Pickle’s guidance
