West Lothian Council is looking to a more digitally-defined future – but according to one, self-confessed, “Luddite” the council cannot even  manage remote meetings using the current technology.

Councillor Frank Anderson said a lot of talk was about the future but added: “The future is here”.

The Executive meeting of West Lothian Council, as others have been, was held in the Webex virtual meeting room – an office within the civic centre.

Some councillors were taking part from their offices in the centre, while others  joined from home.

The councillors can see each other, but the link is often patchy and distorted by noise and there were breaks in the Tuesday morning meeting because of poor reception.

The meeting  was, like others, live-streamed through Audiominutes on the council’s website.  Connection frequently dropped out.

Some local authorities have adopted Zoom and other applications to conduct meetings.

Councillor Anderson, depute SNP group leader, addressing  lessons the council could learn from its response to the pandemic said: “We are talking a lot about the digitisation of services. Speaking as a bit of a Luddite here, we are having technical difficulties even arranging this meeting.

“The question is what are we doing to update facilities for local democracy to function within this council?”

He suggested that existing facilities, with three large screens in the council chambers, could be used as a hybrid form to hold meetings, adding: “There’s a lot of talk about what we are going to do in the future but the future is here. We can talk to the man on the moon but we can’t talk to the civic centre.”

Depute chief executive Graeme Struthers said the council had an ongoing strategy to invest in technology  in the civic centre and other council buildings and to further develop video conference facilities and  hybrid technologies.

An update on technical progress will be brought the to the September meeting of the executive.

Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick, chairing the meeting, said: “There have been blips with this meeting but I have attended several and I think it’s working pretty well.”

After the meeting a council spokesman said: “WebEx is a robust industry-standard platform renowned over the world for its video conference capabilities and high security standards.

“WebEx is also used by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Courts, to name but a few.

“The problems experienced  would have been replicated across whatever solution was used as the issue was not Webex, it was third party devices and Bluetooth related. This issue was resolved and sound improved as a result of the troubleshooting performed.”