Pre-election, Internal Audit Checklist, Updated Model Finance Regulations, Clerks Seminar and Local Councils Explained
Dear Member Councils
Brr! Winter is clinging on, so keep the hats, coats and gloves handy for when you head out into the parishes to review all those jobs you have been putting off till Spring.
I had a great meeting with our MK Parish Liaison Officer, Kay on Monday our BC Officer Gail is currently away. Also with fellow training officers from 16 different ALC’s from around the country on Tuesday. BMKALC hosted a lunchtime session on Mediation and what is actually means and how it can help councils on Tuesday and Wednesday treated us to week 2 of Artificial Intelligence and it’s role in Council Communication. Both courses were fascinating. Mediation is like first aid, you need to know about it but sincerely hope you’ll never need it, AI on the other hand is everywhere already in our lives, so we need to know how to recognise, utilise and optimise what it can do to help us in our council lives. I had written and highlighted two comments in my notes – “time Vampires and “its better than starting with a blank page”.
This weeks inbox as you can imagine is flooded with pre-election period, annual meeting and audit queries. I think most of our Bucks Councils are now clear about the election time line and the process. Annual Meeting of the Council instructions have been shared and if you were thinking of squeezing in a Town or Parish Meeting before the election be mindful of the pre-election period restrictions. The Town or Parish Meeting is a meeting of the electors, not the council and you must be careful not to turn it into an electioneering platform!
Thanks to our Northamptonshire ALC colleagues I have been able to share an internal audit checklist. Please take a moment to look at it and understand what your audit should be covering. I have supplied it in a word template so that you can edit it according to your needs. I believe the AGAR forms aren’t out yet but they do start to emerge around this time. PKF Littlejohn’s website hasn’t been updated with 2024/25 details yet.
A couple of updates from NALC:
Updated Model Finance Regulations –We worked with our finance advisor, Parkinson Partnership LLP, to update the Model Financial Regulations (England). The regulations were updated because of The Procurement Act 2023 and The Procurement Regulation 2024, which came into force last week. The changes are to Model Financial Regulations 5.4, 5.7 and 5.11
Advice note on the publicity during the pre-election period – We have reissued our advice note on the Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity and publicity during the pre-election period (England) as the Local Government Association (LGA) has updated its guide to publicity during the pre-election period. The advice note contains a link to the code and the LGA guidance. According to our data gathered in partnership with Democracy Club, around 1260 parish and town councils across 13 county association areas have elections in May.
Lorraine’s work on the Conference continues and she is now furiously gathering your input for a first ever joint SLCC and BMKALC Clerks Seminar Day, which will likely be held in December. All your suggestions will be collated and we are meeting with Keith and Emma in April to discuss the shape and feel of this new event. I believe that it will qualify as part of your Continued Professional Development and so you will be able to claim SLCC points, we’ll find out how many.
Local Councils Explained is apparently in its final draft read through stage! Long overdue and much missed by new clerks who can’t get the old editions anywhere, we hope that before long we will understand distribution methods and costs for this book. We may have to pre-order, but I’ll let you know if that’s the case.
It’s a little quieter next week, so a chance for me to finish the Clerks Induction handbook amongst other things. We also have to finish off our Code of Conduct day and our Councillor Leadership Course! Our list of things we’d like to do, never gets any shorter! Have a brilliant weekend and we look forward to speaking with you next week!
Kind regards
Mel and Lorraine