Committee Evidence Capture is a research plugin designed to convert publicly available committee recordings into usable evidential material.
Planning committee meetings often contain decision-critical information that is difficult to access, search, or reference. Recordings are typically published as long videos, with no transcript, no indexing, and no practical way to establish what was said, by whom, and when.
This plugin addresses that gap by allowing users to:
- ingest committee recordings from public sources (including online video links or local files);
- generate accurate, timestamped transcripts;
- convert spoken material into searchable text suitable for evidential review.
The tool does not analyse or interpret what was said. It performs a single, defined function: transforming oral material into a form that can be examined, cited, and assessed alongside written evidence.
Committee Evidence Capture is intended to reduce research time and improve evidential clarity, particularly where issues of procedural fairness, decision reasoning, or evidential sufficiency depend on what occurred in committee.
It is designed to complement the Planning Governance Assessment Tool by making a class of evidence that is routinely overlooked both accessible and reviewable.
Evidential outputs
In addition to plain text transcripts, Committee Evidence Capture can generate a structured PDF transcript suitable for inclusion in evidence bundles, complaints, and internal review material.
The PDF output preserves timestamps, pagination, and source information, allowing oral material to be referenced in the same way as written evidence. No interpretation or highlighting is applied; the output is a neutral evidential record of what was said.
This functionality is intended to support procedural clarity by ensuring that committee discussions, which are often decision-critical, can be examined and cited alongside formal documentation.
Installation
Installs as an executional (.exe), which creates a shortcut on the desktop.
Click the shortcut add YouTube url hit “Transcribe” and wait - times vary, but meetings aren't normally more than 90 minutes, so expect a wait of about 20 minutes max.
Once complete, you'll see this.
Hit PDF to view the transcription.
Example
Not a document produced for aesthetic presentation; it is a research document intended for evidential use.
Use within PGAT
To use within PGAT, upload the text document to the appropriate reports/app_no directory and run the analysis again.
Demo
Visit the main site for further details and a demo video.