It could soon no longer be necessary for members of the public wo want to watch council meetings. to sit in the public gallery of the council chamber in Euclid Street.

The proceedings of meetings could be broadcast online as soon as January next year if a new plan is approved.

But it would only be the full council meetings that are webcast - and a quirk of Swindon Borough Council's audio-visual system means those in the public gallery who want to see a councillor's face while they are speaking might have to watch remotely.

A report to the council's cabinet which meets on Wednesday says meetings of the full council could be webcast from January. The idea must be approved by a majority of all councillors at the next full meeting in late November.

The impetus for the change came from a motion passed by members and put forward by scrutiny committee chairman Jim Robbins. After a year of virtual meetings owning to the pandemic, the council was forced to return to in-person meetings in May, when the law allowing online only meetings expired. Swindon council had no policy to put its meetings online but Coun Robbins ' motion noted that many more people had logged in to watch than could ever have attended in person.

Now the report to cabinet says: "The screen and audio systems in the chamber are integrated and broadcasting could commence. The only difference that members and the public would notice is that the four screens used to display the councillor speaking would be either be black or have the speaker appear only in a small part of the screen.

"This would be a minor issue for anyone sitting in the public gallery, who, if the screens were black, would not be able to see the face the person speaking. Officers are seeking a technical solution to address this.

"Members of the public who did not wish to ask public questions but did wish to see the speakers’ faces could use the Function Room. Anyone sitting in this room would have the same view as a person viewing on a laptop at home."

Because other meetings held in the main chamber such as planning meetings, the report recommends only full meetings are webcast.

Coun Robbins said he thought this was a good start: "I’m really pleased that we are finally going to have council meetings broadcast live. The experience through the pandemic taught us that there is a demand from the public to see these meetings and it can only be good for democracy to have as many people as possible aware of what we are doing and how the council operates.

"I’m interested to see how this develops and hope scrutiny committee meetings are broadcast as soon as possible to show how we try to hold the administration to account."