@Ariannah
I've found online meetings are good in terms of accessibility, but appalling in terms of scrutiny
Since Handforth there’s a very strong public appetite to scrutinise meetings in order to uncover “wrongdoing” and post it publicly to get likes and comments. Councillors are volunteers who mostly haven’t received training but will still be held personally liable for anything they say that’s not in line with modern standards of political correctness (which seem to change every five minutes). They could end up losing their jobs or being vilified in the media. It’s not surprising that they’re not keen to continue with recorded meetings.
I meant more in terms of councillors scrutinising ideas, projects, proposals, spend etc. As a committee chair, I can assess what's going on in a room and encourage councillors to speak if I get a feeling they have concerns but are hesitant to present them. The dynamic is more fluid.
I can't do that online. It all becomes very stilted and formal because there's a delay to starting and stopping speaking (invite the councillor to speak, councillor unmutes, the inevitable "can you hear me?", response "yes", councillor speaks, councillor finishes, two seconds of silence to ensure councillor has finished, go to next hands up etc)
And I'm essentially looking at small pictures of people where an icon pops up when they wish to speak. There's no sense of presence and no body language.
Again, when people turn their cameras off, the effect is somewhat like trying to follow a stilted radio play.
Online meetings are convenient, yes, particularly when you have children, but they create a host of other problems. People who don't have printers or two screens end up attending the meeting without the agenda in front of them, for example. You can't tell if someone's doing something else if their camera is off (one councillor, I suspect, plays computer games during full council).