Row over filming at Anston meeting

Members of the public at a charity meeting called by Anston Parish Council last week wanted to film the proceedings in line with new policies.

But parish council chairman Cllr John Ireland stopped them, saying it was a private meeting and not covered by a change in council standing orders which allows public meetings to be filmed by parishioners.

He said they were “jumping the gun” as the rule change was on the agenda for later in the meeting.

The row caused disruption before the standing orders were altered to allow filming in future.

What made the issue more contentious was the fact that the parish council was itself filming the meeting — as it had already agreed to do.

Cllr Ireland, an independent on the mainly Labour council, said it was a case of doing things in the right way and changing the rules and denied he or anyone on the council was trying to suppress parishioner’s rights.

“I’ve no objection to filming at all, in fact I proposed it so that everybody can see what goes on, but you’ve got to abide by the rules or anarchy reigns,” he said.

“The parish council was filming because it was our meeting and we had already decided to do so.

“The charity meeting is a private meeting of parish councillors to which we invite the public in — they have no legal right to attend as they do the parish council meetings.

“The law applies to public meetings and our legal advice was that the rules had to be changed first.

“They were jumping the gun. It was on the agenda but before we got to it we had this kerfuffle, which delayed things.”

Chris Sadler, who was stopped from filming, claimed Labour councillors had “attempted to stop members of the public filming the meeting.”

She claimed Labour councillors had a history of intimidating the public and consequently causing disturbances in meetings.

Ms Sadler went on: “The reasons given were a distortion of the facts and unfortunately for the chairman  the public are in full possession of the true facts and they cannot stop the public filming or exclude the public, particularly as the council were filming the meeting.”

She claimed it it was an attempt at secrecy and suppression of the truth “to keep people in their place”.