Standards committee raise concerns over online voting at Powys council meetings

Independent lay members and councillors received a report from their colleagues who had been “observing” council meetings that took place in October and December, at a meeting of the Standards committee on Wednesday, February 4. 

Independent lay member Jonathan Goolden noted the report had a number of recommendations which were to address councillors’ mobile phone usage, cameras, nameplates and materials on display, such as placards.

Mr Goolden asked: “A number of those issues have been raised more than once, and I would welcome understanding where these observations had got to?”

Deputy Monitoring Officer, Debby Jones said: “It would be better if the feedback was circulated to the council as a whole.”

She asked Democratic Services colleagues whether a report with the observations would be better going before the Audit and Governance committee or Democratic Services committees before being presented to a full council meeting.

Cabinet manager Steve Boyd said that it would be best going to Democratic Services first.

Ms Jones said that she would be happy to prepare a report to go to that committee before going to full council.

Ms Jones said: “If you’re making these observations and then they don’t go any further it’s a bit pointless.

Newly installed committee chairwoman and Independent lay member Claire Moore agreed to this.

Ms Moore added that independent lay member Nigel Steward’s observations of the December 4 council meeting had highlighted issues with voting and cameras.

Mr Steward said: “There was one issue that I noticed which is when votes are taken those members that are online are quite often voting with their cameras turned off.

“We’ve raised this issue before; there’s no validation that there was anyone there or indeed it was them that was voting.”

Mr Boyd explained the process whereby a link to vote is sent to all councillor’s computers.

Mr Boyd said: “We see the votes coming in and see a spreadsheet of who’s voted, what time and how they have voted, which is private to us.

“We have to take it on trust that it was the councillor who voted.

“I’m pretty happy with the way we run the votes.

“If there were any issues where a councillor can’t vote – we record an oral vote and double check that their vote has not gone through electronically.”

He added that the vote results are also made public and published soon after the meeting.

Mr Steward said: “I was looking at this from a public perception, from the point of view, of how does this look to the man on the street who’s bothered to look into the meeting and doesn’t understand how the business is being managed behind the scenes.”

The committee agreed that their observations will go to the Democratic Services committee.