A DECISION over whether Wrexham Council should continue to broadcast meetings online is set to be revisited.

It comes after clarification has been received on a number of issues raised by councillors, including who owns the copyright to footage, after one member was rebuked for downloading and posting a clip on Facebook.

At a meeting in July members of the authority’s democratic services committee deferred proposals to extend webcasting for a further year and add more scrutiny committees onto the schedule.

But officers have once again recommended that they agree to the plans after confirming that the authority does own the copyright.

Head of democratic services, Linda Roberts, said the council’s current contract with broadcast provider Public-i ends in January.

In a report, she said: “At its meeting on July 5 this committee raised a number of issues including the following: (a) Clarification on whether archived webcast recordings could currently be accessed by members and if so, confirmation of the procedure.

“Archived webcast recordings can be requested from Public-i at a cost of £75

per recording.

“(b) Confirmation on who owned the webcast copyright and if the council

came out of contract with Public-I would they keep the webcast

archives.

“The council owns the copyright of the webcasts. Public-i only retains any

archives during the contract period.”

The authority started webcasting in 2014 and currently videos live proceedings from executive board, full council, planning and a handful of scrutiny committee meetings.

Figures show that the number of people watching its webcasts varied from 24 for a lifelong learning scrutiny committee meeting in April this year to 623 for planning decisions in March.

A task and finish group was set up to address some of the issues raised by councillors, who examined what would be required to provide a webcasting service in-house.

However, they decided it was not a viable option because of a number of issues, including a lack of resources.

Ms Roberts said the new 12 month extension could be used as a trial period.

She said: “Any new additional legislative burdens which may be placed on councils are yet unknown, particularly in relation to remote attendance, and it is considered prudent not to enter into a new longer contract at this time given that any new contract could potentially require provision for this service.

“A six month archive facility through Public-i is considered a reasonable period

for the webcast to be available electronically.”

If councillors agree to increase the number of meetings shown, the contract would be extended until January 2020 to cover all full council, executive board and planning meetings, along with up to 10 hours for scrutiny committees.

The council would also have the option to buy additional bundles of 20 hours throughout the year to allow more scrutiny meetings to be shown.

The proposals will be discussed by the commitee on Thursday.