By Anna Whittaker, Local Democracy Reporter
A lack of audio equipment at one of Nottingham City Council’s meeting rooms led to a councillor calling for improvements.
The ground floor committee room at Loxley House has long been criticised for its lack of microphones or audio equipment.
Councillor Sam Webster (Lab) said he has been asking council officers for microphones for over a year but they have not materialised.
It comes as Nottinghamshire County Council has invested over £400,000 on new technology for its own council chamber including wall-mounted displays and person-tracking cameras to focus on councillors when they speak.
Nottingham City Council is one of few authorities in the county which does not live-stream its meetings or use microphones in most meetings.
The authority does, however, use microphones for full council meetings in the Council House.
The point was raised at the authority’s Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee on November 17, where guests from NHS England were asked to speak loudly due to the poor acoustics in the room.
Cllr Webster said: “Can we note in the minutes [of the meeting] that the committee has asked for audio equipment so that people can hear each other?
“We are concerned that people with hearing loss find it difficult to take part in the meeting.
“We’ve been requesting equipment for over a year and it still hasn’t arrived.
“It shouldn’t be beyond the capabilities of a large organisation such as Nottingham City Council to get such equipment installed relatively quickly.
“I wondered if it can be raised with senior officers in the council please.”
Councillor Anne Peach (Lab) told the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the meeting that she had struggled to hear the proceedings.
She said: “I’m getting over a cold so I couldn’t hear properly during the meeting today.
“You don’t realise how much you have to lip-read in this room.
“There is a microphone system in the council chamber but we do have a lot of meetings down here.”
A Nottingham City Council spokesperson said: “Like councils across the country, we’ve been looking at how we can improve equipment in our meeting rooms. This is, in part, a result of the pandemic when we all had to make meetings virtual because of national social-distancing laws in place at the time.
“Unfortunately, the existing audio-visual technology is dated and no longer compatible with some laptops and tablets. We’re currently working on the design requirements of a new system which will address these issues and hope this will be resolved shortly.”
