WEBCASTING of meetings in North Ayrshire Council will not come in to play until the Spring of 2016 at the earliest.

The live broadcasting of meetings from Cunninghame House has been on the agenda since October 2014, when the Council’s Chambers were revamped, but the streaming service has never materialised and now the council are blaming costs for the lack of service.

First mentioned in October of last year, The proposed webcasting service was welcomed by both Labour and SNP politicians within the council and it was hoped it would give those who couldn’t attend council meetings in person the chance to see what goes on, who represents them and what decisions were being made.

This has not come to fruition and Budget restraints are to blame, according to NAC.

A North Ayrshire Council spokesperson said: “The refurbished Council Chambers have audio-visual facilities which have the capacity to webcast meetings. No costs have yet been incurred which solely relate to webcasting.

“There is much more to webcasting than live streaming of meetings. There are technical issues regarding the format in which webcasts are stored, indexed and hosted – the digital capacity required for this is extremely large.

“We have taken the experiences of other local authorities and organisations into account so that we can deliver the best possible service.

“Other local authorities who have webcast have relied on the services of external providers to format and store the webcast after it has initially gone out live.

“This will be one of the issues which the Council will need to consider when setting next year’s budget.”