A global delay in the supply of equipment has seen the return of West Lothian Council to the 'new normal' of hybrid meetings delayed again.
Work started this week to transform West Lothian Council chambers for the new meetings.
Contractors were in the Civic Centre to begin the installation of the new £150,000 audio visual system which will bring councillors back to face to face meetings in the chamber.
But it will be one month shy of a two year gap before that meeting takes place because of a global delays in the supply of IT equipment largely down to the knock-on effects of the pandemic.
The council had hoped to be up and running with the new system before Christmas but conceded that delays in the supply chain and a global shortage of IT components would push back the return of meetings.
The last meeting in the chamber was on the Thursday before Prime Minister Boris Johnston announced a national lockdown on Monday 23 March 2020.
In a report to the council’s Executive Ian Forrest from the council’s IT service team said: “I’m pleased to advise committee work has started on the installation of the new system the contractors were on site yesterday.”
The Televic Confidea Flex audio visual system which will replace the current audio only system in the council chamber. Meetings are currently live streamed, without vision via the Audiominutes platform.
Mr Forrest’s report added: “Time scales for delivery of the equipment are currently on target with the plan to install the devices and equipment in January and carry out testing and live demonstrations e-voting in January and February. In order to allow time for the testing and user awareness it is anticipated that the system will be available to go live by end February 2022.
“That will require an interim continuation of meetings by remote access until the end of February 2022.”
An update will be given to the next meeting of the Executive on 22 February- with the new deadline to go live from the end of that month.
Councillors agreed late last year to hybrid meetings where a maximum of seven councillors would attend in person at the chamber with others required to appear on camera with AV voting available as well.
Testing, training and “user-awareness” will take place next month with a return to in chamber meetings in March.
Chairing the meeting, council leader Councillor Lawrence Fitzpatrick said: “This is indeed progress.”
