National Strategic Infrastructure Projects, Buckinghamshire Council Devolved Services Contracts, Fight For Standards, BMKALC Recruiting Two New Roles
Dear Colleagues
The week started with consideration of the sustained impact on communities of National Strategic Infrastructure projects. Certainly our members have faced significant impact from HS2, East West Rail, new jail applications, airport expansion, large scale solar farms, battery hubs water treatment and water transport schemes, to name a few. For some of our parishes, they are experiencing serial impact from more than one of these projects. Throughout the lengthy Inspectorate process it feels like a community impact assessment is not a key consideration and certainly there doesn’t seem to be any vehicle to line up the cumulative impact of more than one project. I don’t have an answer on what we can do yet, but I have had some early engagement from our MP’s across the political spectrum and following my meeting with BC this week, will be looking to hold meetings with them. I’ll keep you posted.
Our CiLCA 2025 cohort team attended month 3, Finance, in Aylesbury Town Council’s chamber on Wednesday, following the power supply disruption at Judges Lodgings. We are extremely grateful to the team at ATC and for their warm welcome on the day. It also prompts me to remind all previous CiLCA candidates that this week is your last chance to register for your CiLCA portfolio assessment. If you miss the August 1st deadline, you will need to retake the whole training again next year against a new portfolio. So please, if you are wanting to complete your assessment, register! I will host an open house for the November date, so that we can mop up everyone’s snags and get you back on track!
BC have contacted councils with devolved services contracts to give notice of termination of the current contracts in order to mount a large scale review. I have contacted BC to express my surprise in the order in which they have taken these steps and I hope to have further clarity to share with you soon.
Part of our new chairing skills training includes how new teams come together and evolve into a strong working unit. In local government particularly, there is often little common ground in terms of skills, experience and even expectations and it can take a while to take measure of the new resources that the council has and to build the right frameworks to bring everyone up to speed. The different stages in this are known as forming, storming, norming and performing. Ref Tuckman, D.W. Developmental Sequence in Small Groups, Psychological Bulletin 1965, 63(6) 284-299. As we approach the summer break, we should be through the forming stage and will be looking to the storming phase as we meet again in September. This is a great time to storming as we consider our ambitions for the future and how these sit against our powers and feed into our budget, then after Christmas when the Precept is put to bed we can really crack on with normal business and when the financial year kicks in, really set about delivering. / performing. Even if you haven’t been through an election this year, you can still look to this model to make your council more effective in it’s actions.
In looking at group dynamics you can’t ignore the issues that some in our local council family face, poor behaviour is far too common. It is unacceptable at any level and we continue to campaign hard for improvement with training and education. I’d sooner work hard to improve behaviour than work to a scheme of imposing sanctions, and by the same token I’d rather campaign for sanctions than accept the democratic deficit brought about the disgraceful behaviour that puts good people off engaging in their local communities. I’d like to draw your attention to an event with the Jo Cox foundation the recording of this event is in the members-only area of the NALC website: https://www.nalc.gov.uk/resource/is-the-fight-for-standards-a-losing-battle.html.
Next week we have Clerks Forums in the BC area, a bespoke training event on Monday evening and a Knowledge Bites session with Aubergine on Friday.
Finally a personal recruitment appeal, for more than a year now Lorraine and I have continued to man the services of BMKALC without the support of Helen. This has coincided with an increase in the member support services and, members! This is brilliant news, but, we desperately to replace the resource we lost. We have the equivalent of one full time position to offer but have split it into two roles, details attached. If you are interested or know someone who would be please get in touch. We are a busy but happy office, no two days the same and we work with wonderful people. We blend office and work from home and tools and training will be provided. Ideally we’d like to get our new colleagues in place for September, so please get in touch soon.
We look forward to speaking with you next week and wish you all a fabulous weekend.
Kind regards
Mel & Lorraine
https://bucksalc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Finance-and-Administration-officer-for-BMKALC.pdf
https://bucksalc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Member-Services-Officer-for-BMKALC.pdf