AS lockdown laws begin to ease, Frome Town Council’s clerk reflects on a year of virtual meetings.
Paul Wynn, told Frome Times he and councillors had found the online experience “ok, but not brilliant”.
“One of the positives is probably that we can meet up face-to-face on screens more easily than before,” Paul said. “The negatives are you just don’t pick up the unspoken body language on Zoom. One of the good things about meeting face-to-face is the quick chats you can have before and after meetings. Zoom doesn’t really lend itself to these.”
Any technical issues had been quickly overcome, he added, saying, “The number of times we have to say to each other ‘you’re on mute’ has dropped enormously and once we all learnt what all the buttons meant, meetings are pretty smooth.
“I think we all miss not actually seeing each other in the flesh… I’m pretty sure that attendance of councillors at meeting has remained high. Public attendance is also about the same too.”
Paul said he was looking forward to returning to physical meetings but virtual meetings have advantages and it was likely they would also continue.
“The way we run the meetings means that those who are not councillors or staff, are what Zoom calls ‘attendees’ who have to be patched into the meeting to be able to speak,” Paul said.
“This isn’t very good and I’m looking forward to the day we return to physical meetings where everyone feels much more equal and it’s easy to be part of the discussion. Virtual meetings have the advantage that anyone in the world is able to be part of the meeting. Why would we want to stop that? We had a training session recently run by two Australians, from Australia – it was great.
“I expect future council meetings to be both virtual and public – this way we can maximise the number of people who take part.”
Paul hoped physical meetings could recommence early summer but added that we never know for sure.
