Practice makes perfect. That old saying is as relevant today as it was when I was in short trousers.
There’s also another popular saying about what you should do if you don’t succeed. Fortunately, our first-ever virtual cabinet meeting went relatively smoothly and we will most definitely be doing it again.
But it’s only alright on the night if you lay the groundwork beforehand and we learned some important lessons along the way.
We were just days away from holding our March cabinet meeting when the lockdown was announced and from that moment on, like most councils, our immediate attention focused on supporting our vulnerable residents and keeping as many services going for households across the borough.
Our officers have been nothing short of incredible in the way they have responded to the crisis which has gripped the nation over the last two months. In fact it is their diligence which has allowed us as elected members to focus on getting the council’s decision-making functions back up and running with the help of our committee services team, not to mention our excellent IT team.
Of course we had to wait until the Government passed the necessary legislation to allow us to hold meetings virtually and, while we were in the planning stages of working out the best approach, we were able to take valuable learning from what other councils were doing.
The contributions from members of the public at some of these early virtual meetings elsewhere in the country may have kept the media amused, but they were a real cause for consternation and raised significant questions about the suitability of various meeting platforms.
Prior to the lockdown our IT team were in the process of rolling out Microsoft Teams software to the entire organisation, so we used this opportune moment to bring forward our plans and we tested the technology out on members first to see if it would provide the functionality we required.
Our IT team ran training sessions with members to enable them to familiarise themselves with the platform and we were encouraged to try it out for ourselves.
An advantage of using Teams is that you can use the chat function, which means the meeting is much easier to control. The video conference function only comes into play when the person is speaking which makes the meeting far easier to follow, rather than having pictures of large numbers of councillors all on the screen at any one time.
It places a great deal of responsibility on the chair, but if participants are well versed in indicating when they would like to speak, the meeting can be managed effectively.
And this is the key to staging virtual meetings. You need to ensure those taking part feel confident to use the technology and, more importantly, know what cues and prompts to use before contributing to the debate so it doesn’t become a free for all.
To run through this meeting etiquette we had two dummy runs ahead of the real thing. The second was more successful than the first, but that is why the practice mantra is so important.
Using Teams you don’t have the audience participation like you do in a real meeting, but members of the public could ask questions in advance of the meeting and answers were provided on the night. Ensuring non-executive members and members of the public can engage ‘live’ rather than just through tabled questions is the next challenge to overcome.
Anyone who wanted to watch the meeting could view it on a live stream signposted from a link on our website. On the night, 32 people tuned in to watch us approve our town centre movement strategy and support plans to safeguard the future of one of the town’s most important heritage assets. Far more interesting than EastEnders but, having chaired well over 50 cabinet meetings during my seven years as leader, I am biased.
The feedback we have received has been positive and I’m pleased to report there were no gaffs reported by our local democracy reporter. We’ll keep practicing to ensure it stays that way.
Cllr David Renard is leader of Swindon BC
Local Government Association guidance, good practice and case studies on hosting remote meetings is available at www.local.gov.uk