Election Update, Pre-election Period, LGPS, BC Planning Portal, CiLCA Candidates, Local Council Initiatives/Good News
Dear Colleagues
Yes, two for one this week!
We are happy to be coming to the end of a period of technical challenges! Imports that will not work, BC laptops that cannot access restricted sites and personal laptops that can, but can’t access BC printers. You name it, we’ve faced it! All this prompts me to remind you to check your IT backups and, resilience in the event of catastrophic failure. Of course risk doesn’t just live in our digital world, in the wake of a recent office fire in one of our parishes, we are reminded to think about what steps we need to have in place to maintain service continuity and protection of our physical assets.
Election Update – Existing Councillors will retire on Tuesday 6th May, and new ones take office the same day, for clarity any meetings scheduled on Tuesday the 6th will be for the new Councillors.
In the matter of voting for the new Chairperson, councillors may vote for themselves. A retiring, as a councillor, chairperson presides over the election of the new chairperson at the AGM, only has a casting vote, whereas an outgoing chairperson who is re-elected as a councillor, has both an original and a casting vote.
For anyone still uncertain about what can and can’t happen during the period of Pre Election, check out https://www.nalc.gov.uk/resource/code-of-recommended-practice-on-local-authority-publicity-and-publicity-during-the-pre-election-period-england.html and A short guide to publicity during the pre-election period | Local Government Association.
For those Councils managing the Local Government Pension Scheme for their employees please be mindful of the 19th of April deadline for submitting your annual return.
The BC Clerks Forum Wednesday 23 April, online. Please send any questions you have either to me or to Gail so that we can try and ensure there are answers for you. We will I believe have Darren Eggleton with us from planning.
That brings me to the question of comments on the BC Planning Portal. I undertook to obtain impartial advice on the change in BC’s position in publishing theses comments. This is the advice received.
“Buckinghamshire Council are the data controllers for this data and they have decided to stop proactively publishing comments on planning applications. They have done this to improve their own data protection compliance. A person would reasonably expect that they could make a comment on a planning application in confidence and not have their personal information automatically published to the world so this would seem a sensible move.
By removing the automatic publishing, Buckinghamshire are improving their data protection compliance and aligning it with the expectations of the data subjects. This is Buckinghamshire Council data and it is their choice to make as to how its processed.
I can see that parishes may be annoyed that the comments aren’t available to them any longer but those comments were made by the data subjects with the understanding they were making the comment to Buckinghamshire Council, rather than any other entity. If the parishes wish to solicit comments on planning applications themselves, then they could do that themselves via their own means and with proper data protection considerations, but will most likely encounter the same concerns over data protection that Bucks has.“
It is further noted that FOI and EIR access remains available to Councils. I have also asked if BC might consider a single authorised user login for the Clerks, to permit continued access in our role as Statutory Consultee.
The CiLCA 2025 cohort is now under starters orders. The introductory session has taken place and we look forward to welcoming candidates when their challenge officially begins in May. Final places are available to book on our website.
It is worth noting that the current Portfolio guide is in it’s last year and those undertaking this years training must register for their portfolio assessment with the SLCC by the 1st of August this year, then allowing them the usual 12 months for completion and qualification. If you don’t register in time you will have to redo the portfolio training with the new version of the guide. If you have previously undertaken the CiLCA element with us but not yet undertaken the qualification part this really is the final call. Contact Mel to discuss what you could do.
Next year’s BMKALC CiLCA 2026 cohort will use the new portfolio guide. This has not yet been shared so i can’t tell you how different it is. Those already qualified, remain so.
Worknest are offering a council focussed H&S session. Keeping Your Council Compliant | proactive tips, best practices, and preparing for change
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You may recall when I rejoined BMKALC and we rejigged The View, that I asked for good news stories or initiatives that we could share with the greater family. We stated off well and then drifted so I’m delighted to be able to share one just in time for the long weekend.
Hughenden Parish Council as other councils have done before them, decided that they would put together an easy walk round each of the parish wards – one highlighting aspects of nature and the environment and the other looking at the rich heritage of the area.
The idea was to both put the walks on the Parish Website as a free resource but also encourage parishioners to use them to get to know their parish and also provide healthy and interesting activities for all in the parish including families.
This task has now been completed – they plan more walks in the future and locally, regular walks are provided in some of the wards which has meant building up quite a following.
By putting them in a simple foldable A4 to A5 format it has also meant that we can print them and hand them out at parish events etc.
Walking Routes | Hughenden Parish Council
I was really pleased to receive this update, thank you Cllr Kearey, not only because Hughenden PC remains close to my heart, but because this is very much in keeping with our Place Shaping theme this year. Looking at how we highlight all the fabulous hyper local advantages we already have, sharing them with our community and those interested in joining us is a key foundation to the other projects and services we put in place for our community.
So there is your reminder, let me know your local interest and good news stories so that we can share them with our wider family. Lorraine and I wish you a very happy and relaxing Easter weekend and hope that you will make the most of the extra time off. We look forward to speaking to you next week.
Kind regards
Mel & Lorraine