Finding key information shared at council meetings takes time and effort. Today, we've launched a tool that allows you to search verbatim quotes from council meetings in the UK and Ireland, without the need to watch long recordings or sift through extensive notes. council-search.bellingcat.com
Excellent. Much appreciated.
Excellent - had a look at Kent County Council - what an eyeopener - something tells me Reform won't be there long!!!
Created by @galen.reich.me.uk , this is a local democracy reporting tool that enables researchers to search for keywords in auto-generated transcripts by the councils' multimedia provider, available for different authorities across the UK and Ireland.
As always, our tools are open source. If you want to peer behind the curtain, or write code to support more councils, the code is available on GitHub 🛠️ github.com/bellingcat/C...
We hope it improves accessibility to the important information available at these public-facing council meetings, and the tool comes in useful for anyone wanting to hold their local councillors to account.
Looks good -- have you got a guide to inputting more transcripts?
Looks very good but where is my own council, Durham?
Parish councils still allowed to meet under the cloak of secrecy?
📌
Excellent. One of the few good uses of AI I’ve seen.
Please tell me LLMs aren’t somehow involved in the tool chain.
Now make it work with the rest of the world's administrative divisions and their agendas, meeting minutes, reports and etc.
Handy, thank you. Are these county councils? I can’t see Cheltenham Borough Council but can see Gloucester
@alexparsons.bsky.social one for you perhaps
You might also want to add in the UK's private eye content somehow, as they generally have reams on content on dodgy council decisions.