MEETINGS of Exmoor National Park Authority and two of its committees will be recorded for a trial period of nine months.

It took more than an hour of discussion and needed the chairman Cllr John Dyke's casting vote before members decided to audio record the main authority meetings and those of the planning and resources and performance committees.

The recordings will be trialed until the authority's annual meeting next June before being reviewed "having regard to the cost, benefit and effectiveness of recording meetings during this time".

Cllr Dyke had previously pledged to abstain from voting on the issue having dismissed the idea of recording meetings.

But he was put on the spot when the vote was evenly split and decided to support a trial period after hearing arguments both for an against recordings.

The debate had been prompted after pressure group Exmoor Uprising claimed minutes were not full enough.

In a report to Tuesday's meeting of the authority, Cllr Dyke and Charles Burrows, the head of corporate services, warned that making audio recordings could "change the nature and culture of meetings".

They were also told the move could have "resource implications", lead to legal challenges from lawyers and not be in keeping with practices at the majority of other national park authorities.

The pair also pointed out there has never been a complaint about the accuracy of the minutes of committee meetings, which had been taken down by pen and paper since the authority's inception in 1997.

Mr Burrows said minutes were not meant to be a verbatim report of a meeting and their accuracy was also checked and approved at subsequent meetings.

But many members felt the authority had nothing to lose and, equally, nothing to hide and called for audio recordings to be trialed - a call that was echoed by the Exmoor Society during the public participation section of the meeting.

Exmoor Uprising spokesman Molly Groves dismissed concerns about recordings as "twaddle" and said problems arose in the first place because minutes were not a full account of meetings.

She claimed moor residents had had complaints about minutes "for the last ten years", while "planning minutes had come in for more criticism than the rest put together".

Speaking at the meeting, Mrs Groves said: "Since 1997 there have been enormous advances in IT technology.

"To say there has been no complaint about the accuracy of the minutes is only because people cannot prove their complaints because they do not have audio recordings to prove them."

Afterwards, she said she was "satisfied" with the decision to trial audio recordings.

However, she said the group was still unhappy with the anticipated costs of proposals for national park authorities to undertake assessments of each other and Exmoor's unrelated plans to create "three managerial posts" in the current economic climate.

"I'm sure local inhabitants would be delighted to assess national park authorities for free and for an authority that already employs 97 people to look at three more managerial posts in the present financial climate is a disgrace," she said.

The detailed arrangements and procedures for the recording of meetings will be considered and at the next meeting of the authority in November.