Biddulph town councillors have considered how to record their discussions once in person meetings are allowed to resume with the removal of Coronavirus restrictions.

In normal times, meetings of Biddulph Town Council are held in person at the Town Hall, but restrictions on gatherings put in place during the pandemic meant councillors in Biddulph and the rest of the country had to move their meetings online.

Biddulph Town Council's meetings are currently held via Zoom and broadcast live for the public to watch on Facebook.

At a Finance Strategy and Management Committee meeting held last night (Tuesday), councillors discussed the rules around recording meetings, with an update on the return of in person meetings being expected within the next few weeks.

The council's chief officer Sarah Haydon said: "Legislation was set out in 2014 regarding what people can do when they attend meetings and how they record them. A new section has been added for this year regarding recording virtual meetings, and it sets out how we've had to move to this new format of meetings.

"That means we haven't got any control of what the public do regarding recording meetings, nor do we want any, but we are urging people to act responsibly with those recordings, and we will delete our recordings of meetings once the minutes have been approved so we're not storing that information."

Cllr John Jones named a potential date for when in person meetings could start to return as May 6th, but this has not yet been confirmed.

He said: "Have we had any update on May 6th, are we still going to carry on Zooming after May 6th?"

Cllr Tony Hall responded: "We haven't heard yet, but rumour has it that it will be due either this week or the beginning of next week."

Cllr Jones explained that he hoped meetings could continue to be recorded when meetings are allowed to take place in person again, saying: "I would hope to carry on with some sort of hybrid version of this in future anyway."

Cllr Wayne Rogers felt that members of the public recording meetings in person could be "intimidating" if the recording was too intrusive.

He said: "When we are on Zoom meetings we understand that a lot of people can be viewing us, and we have the option of muting our video and our audio.

"But when we were in the council chambers a while ago we once had somebody with a camcorder, and I thought it was a bit intimidating because they were putting the camcorder right up to your face as you were talking.

"That felt more intimidating even though more people watch them now. In face to face meetings in the future I'd like to see camcorders being left to record in the corner in the room, not with somebody holding it and zooming in on whoever is speaking."

Cllr Hall replied: "I agree but I don't think we could actually do that because legislation allows it, but we do want to organise it so it doesn't become very intrusive."

Cllr Nigel Yates then suggested uploading meetings to YouTube to make them more accessible for those who don't use Facebook, saying: "I'd like to see meetings uploaded to YouTube because it's more available for anybody who has a PC, not just Facebook users.

"A lot of people don't want Facebook but YouTube is available virtually anywhere. There's also no need to delete them because it's not using our storage space and it becomes an interesting archive."

Sarah Haydon agreed to "investigate YouTube", adding: "We chose Facebook because we have a Facebook account and we were required to put our meetings into the public domain. I can investigate YouTube, the legislation doesn't say we have to use a range of platforms but I can look into it if you think it's a better one."

It was also agreed to investigate uploading recordings of meetings onto the council's own website.

Councillors agreed to approve the current guidance on recording meetings, but added that a statement could be read at the beginning of meetings explaining the rules around recording and informing members of the public that they could be removed from the meeting if they cause too much of a disturbance.