Hampshire county council meeting

Today’s trip into Winchester for the Hampshire county council cabinet meeting was surprisingly a lot more interesting than I expected! The room change, refreshments and the chairman’s constant reference to us University of Winchester students made me feel quite important at set a good tone for the morning.

The meeting room itself was amazing to look at and reminded me of my visit to the courts at the beginning of the year to watch a trial in the public gallery.

The meeting itself was very different to what I had expected! I have never before been to a council meeting and I was pleasantly surprised.  There was a relaxed atmosphere but still a sense of seriousness when the matters for discussion were being presented. I was impressed by the level of details in the presentations and the thoughts covering every angle of positives and negatives that a change might bring.

The meeting lasted for nearly two hours in which time three matters were discussed and conclusions reached. I was surprised by the very narrow range of ages in the meeting, all of the older generation and mostly male, I would have expected a much greater variation of people representing Hampshire county council.

The meeting was finally concluded and we were thanked by the council for turning up and gaining experience from the whole process, which was nice to see. I feel that I now have enough information to start my first of three radio stories, so the day was very productive and actually quite enjoyable.