The future of webcast council meetings will be considered by councillors today (Monday).

So far it has cost just under £31,000 to broadcast full council and extraordinary council meetings online.

The initial one year time period was extended in May 2014 with the intention of reviewing provision when the current contract ends in July 2015.

The set up of the system and initial running costs, which totalled £21,266, were paid for by a Welsh Government grant.

The cost to the council to run the webcasts for a second year was £9,638, as the webcasting equipment had already been purchased. This covered up to 60 hours of broadcasting per year.

The council’s corporate governance committee, which meets on Monday, will consider extending the contract for a period between one and three years. The annual cost of running the service goes down in increments the longer it runs for, it ranges between £10,690 and £8,873 per year.

Meetings can either be watched live or accessed from an archive. Last March’s drew the biggest live audience, with 3,450 people tuning in. A further 3,800 watched archive coverage making it the second most viewed meeting in the history of the webcasts. February’s extraordinary meeting drew in a total of 7,400 viewers.

However full council meetings in May and December last year garnered the fewest hits, with each being viewed by just around 1,500 people.