Live audiocast from the council chamber today . . .

The first live broadcast from a meeting in the council chamber is due to take place today, Wednesday.

Orkney Islands Council plans to introduce audiocasting in June for most committee and council meetings, so, to help develop the service, today’s meeting of the education, leisure and housing committee and the development and infrastructure committee tomorrow will be streamed live from School Place.

Both meetings begin at 10.30am and the live audiocasts will be available by following a link from www.orkney.gov.uk

OIC chief executive Alistair Buchan said: “We’ve been testing the audiocasting system we’ve developed and the results to date have been encouraging. We feel now is the time to offer public broadcasts for the first time to help us fine tune the process.

“The live stream from the council chamber will provide the public with the opportunity to listen in as elected members debate a range of issues of importance to our community.

“We hope people will go online to hear all or part of these trial broadcasts – and get back to us with feedback on the experience.”

According to the OIC, the next stage of the project will be to offer an additional listen-again service, with audio recordings from meetings available on the website. The aim is to introduce this later in the year.