21 July 2010
Source: LocalGov.co.uk ()

Council axes £36,000 virtual town hall


James Evison

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council has shelved a virtual town hall after spending £36,000 getting it up and running, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed.


The FOI request by Tameside blogger Liam Billington revealed the expenditure by the council.

The authority paid £3,250 for initial work and consultation on the virtual town hall, and then paid out £17,000 to IT company Second Places to develop the island on the social networking world Second Life.

It also paid nearly £10,000 for the ‘rental’ of virtual land and management, £6,000 for a virtual museum and £400 for a statue.

The Tameside Second Life Service began in January 2009 but was scrapped in March this year.

The council said the project was abandoned because it could not justify the cost and that there was ‘no benefit’ to the project.

It had hoped that through the virtual town hall it would have gained contact with hard-to-reach citizens, such as the young and those with mobility issues.



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