OCN for journalists

Cover local government more effectively, in less time

OCN turns every council meeting you cover into a searchable, sourced, deadline-ready briefing. Local Democracy Reporters use it to cover more meetings, and report them in more depth, without adding to their week.

We watch the meetings, tell you which ones matter, and hand you the decisions with the quotes already sourced. The hours you save go back into the reporting, allowing you to spend time on real reporting - speaking to residents and councillors and exploring deeper stories.

Used by Local Democracy Reporters

Expand coverage without increasing workload

270+ councils tracked across the UK

Three councils, ninety hours of meetings, one reporter

A single reporter often covers three or four councils. That can be thirty meetings in a week and close to ninety hours of meetings, and thousands of pages or report packs.

Nobody has time to watch it all, so stories slip through, and the ones you do catch end up thinner than they should be. You should be spending more time talking to councillors and residents, rather than scrubbing through YouTube. OCN helps you do that.

How OCN fits your week

Friday: know which meetings are worth your time

Every week you get a forward-look across all your councils: which committees are meeting, what is on each agenda, and where the stories are likely to be. You start the week knowing which meetings to watch and which to skip, so the time you have goes into covering the ones that matter properly.

A Friday forward-look email listing next week's meetings across several councils with likely story angles
  • See which meetings are worth attending, and why
  • Spot the likely angles before a meeting happens
  • Know which meetings are recorded and which need you on the ground
Through the week: morning briefings to start the day

A daily briefing tells you what was decided across every council you follow, written decision-first. Key potential stories are highlighted, and you get a summary of the coming day's meetings.

A daily briefing email with decision-first summaries across several councils, each tagged by story type
  • A quick read covering all the councils you follow
  • Yesterday's decisions summarised, so you never miss a story
  • Today's agenda laid out, so you can plan your day
Whilst writing: ask the meeting a question

Ask in plain English, "How did councillors vote on the budget?" or "What were the objections to the development?", and get an answer in seconds. Every answer comes back with the exact quote, and one click takes you to the moment in the video, the line in the transcript, or the paragraph in the document, so you can go deeper and still be sure of every fact.

Asking a question about a meeting and receiving an answer with a direct quote and a clickable link to the source document
  • Ask questions in plain English and get instant answers
  • Direct quotes, ready to drop into your copy
  • One click takes you to the source for fact-checking

Search the record, back through time and across councils

When a story breaks you rarely start from scratch. Search every meeting, transcript and document we hold to find when a site, a policy or a councillor last came up, and how the position has shifted since.

And because search runs across every council we track, not just your own, you can see who else is dealing with the same developer, the same contractor or the same problem, and turn a single local decision into a regional story.

A search across councils returning meetings, transcripts and documents that mention the same topic over time
  • Trace a topic back through years of meetings and documents
  • Search transcripts, agendas and reports in one place
  • Compare how councils across the UK handle the same issue

Every line traces back to the record

AI you can't check is no use on a newsdesk. So nothing in OCN is a black box. Summary, transcript and video sit side by side, and you can see exactly which line of the record each claim came from.

Click any quote and you land on the moment it was said, so you can chase claims for additional context and ensure every fact is sourced.

The police application document opened at page 2 with the quoted line highlighted, showing exactly where a copilot answer came from
  • Timestamped quotes taken straight from the webcast
  • Summary, transcript and video sit side by side
  • Built only on the public record of agendas, minutes and webcasts

Built for the way local news actually works

Open Council Network helps Local Democracy Reporters produce great stories, and hold democracy to account across the UK.

Cover more meetings, in more depth, starting this week

The Professional subscription gives you everything you need to stay on top of every council you report on.

  • ✓ Weekly forward-look and daily decision briefings for every council you follow
  • ✓ Ask any meeting a question and get sourced, quotable answers
  • ✓ Full transcripts, documents and webcasts, cross-linked
  • ✓ Search across every UK council we track
  • ✓ Cross-council trend analysis
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