A SENIOR councillor is campaigning for meetings of Swindon Council to be filmed and broadcast on the internet to rebuild public trust and encourage engagement with the decisions of the council.

Coun Mark Dempsey, the Labour group’s deputy leader, who is also the party’s prospective Parliamen-tary candidate for Swindon North, has tabled a motion to be discussed at an extraordinary full council meeting tomorrow asking for a feasibility report to be completed within three months.

However, Coun Dale Heenan, the cabinet member for strategic planning and sustainability, says the project would cost around £30,000 in the first year for just 10 full council meetings to be broadcast, when the audience would probably be low.

Swindon Council already has a system in the main chamber, of the Civic Offices, off Euclid Street, where the member who is speaking is amplified via a microphone, and is also filmed automatically on a camera and appears on a screen at the front. But this footage is not broadcast externally.

Several councils around the UK already broadcast council meetings via their website. For example, Stroud District Council, in Gloucestershire, offers webcasts where residents can watch live council meetings and playback recordings for up to six months afterwards.

Speaking during the first debate on council TV in 2011, Coun Dempsey said: “The only way they can engage in meetings is to sit in the public gallery or submit written questions. Why?”

Coun Jim Grant, the Labour group leader, said: “The council has some flexibility about what it chooses to broadcast and whether we broadcast live “We think that spending £30,000 on enabling residents to watch what their elected representatives are saying on their behalf in their front-rooms is better value than the £100,000 spent on the big waste of money that is the Big Conversation.”

Coun Heenan said that Coun Dempsey needed to question whether this was a priority for residents or just a personal hobby horse, adding that the biggest single change to rebuild trust in council decisions would be for opposition councillors to start attending meetings and contributing.

He added: “Personally, I can’t see many people watching EastEnders and then logging onto the council website to watch a council meeting.

“We must be open to new ideas, but this one simply lets people tick the “use the internet to engage with the public” box without actually achieving much.”

Coun Dave Wood, the Lib Dem group’s deputy leader, said in principle it could improve accountability for the discussion to be on the record in a public format, but thought the audience would be low and it could be costly.

Allison Sharpe, head of corporate resources at Stroud District Council, said: “Webcasting makes the workings of the council much more accessible to the public. In November for example, 415 people viewed all or part of six different meetings. That’s much better than having a handful of people sitting at the back of the council chamber.”