Can anyone remember Christmas? It feels like we hurtled into it, hardly took a breath and here we are in February! This week I attended the national Improvement and Development work group alongside the SLCC, NALC and the LGA. It was an interesting and constructive day and we looked together at priorities and suggestion to put to the official Board meeting on March 5th. It renewed my enthusiasm for developing the Pro Pathways for Councillor Development which Lorraine has always championed, I think we now have a better idea of how to approach this.
We continued the week with visits to councils for Bespoke Training, thank you Stony Stratford for hosting in your brilliant Library area. On Thursday we had another first as we delivered training to the BC Fraud Investigative team to introduce them to Town and Parish Councils, namely our remit, controls and governance. Today I’ll be donning my Job Evaluation workgroup hat, as the team meet and finalise its recommendations to the IDB board.
Last week saw the conclusion of the 2026 Free January season. The numbers and the comments tell us we continue to find topic that you find interesting and sometimes even essential. As a direct result of your comments we hope to tempt Gary Barker one of the NALC Legal Team, back more often. If you have suggestions for short info sessions or longer full training session, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
ALC’s were promised a new Procurement guide this week, but we haven’t see it yet. I’m hoping it will answer those lingering questions from our procurement day, like you I’m keen to have a definitive guide. I also now have been passed a lite version of an IT policy that is Assertion 10 compliant. I’m just going through it before I put it out there for your consideration.
Next week we kick off with a CiLCA Unit 4 review. Unit 4 is the finance module and it’s a timely opportunity as you move into year-end preparation for our students who have yet to complete this module to revisit it again. We’ll be meeting in Judges Lodgings so if you haven’t yet completed this module and you have previously been registered with us in the last three years, aiming to complete by August this year, get in touch today! We then start our Councillor Essentials course, week 1 of a three-week course. Please remember that the BC Planning Forum which was booked for the 11th has been moved to February 19th.
Finally don’t forget about this year’s Royal Garden Parties, I’ve sent a reminder under separate cover. I’ve also attached an update from the ICO for your weekend reading. We’ll be back in the saddle next week and looking forward to speaking with you, until then have a great weekend.
Kind Regards,
Mel, Lorraine & Jess