Wolverhampton Council’s committees are to test the use of a mobile app in favour of paper at their meetings.
Its governance committee has agreed on the move, which will run a pilot with a view to rolling it out to all of the council’s committees.
It will see councillors begin to use the Modern.Gov app rather than have minutes and background documents printed out.
The move is being made after Wolverhampton declared a climate change emergency and to save on printing and postage charges. There will be some flexibility, with finance papers and appendices to some heavily detailed reports being printed.
Councillors with hidden disabilities will receive appropriate support in using the app.
The report with the recommendation for the move says the app should enable councillors to access most of the relevant papers on tablet devices, although some will need to improve their IT skills.
The app can be set to retain six months’ worth of committee papers and has a range of annotation tools.
Printing and postage costs for the council have been estimated at just under £10,000 per year.
Image from the IET, public domain
