ADSO Board Nominations
The nominations for Board Directors for 2020/21 have closed and the following were received:
Chair John Austin
Vice-Chair Peter Sass
Company Secretary Michelle Beaumont & Priya Patel
Director of Communications Joanna Boaler
Director of Finance John Lynch
Director of Training Susan Biddle
We are pleased to report that Michelle and Priya have agreed to role share the Company Secretary position. Both will be great assets to the Board. Pete Savage will be stepping down from that role and our thanks to him for his work during the last two years.
The above will be subject to approval at the AGM on 26th November.
Regional meetings
I attended the Combined Authorities Regional Meeting on Friday while John Austin attended the North West Regional meeting. It was good to see the Combined Authorities get together and there was some useful discussion around the CfGS updating their Guidance for Combined Authorities on Scrutiny; arrangements for key and delegated decisions; ADSO Webinar topics and general sharing of information amongst colleagues. John has also reported a good attendance at the North West meeting with interesting discussions on remote meetings, unitary status and the Accessibility Regulations. Our thanks to those regional representatives who organised the meetings and to everyone who attended.
Webinar Programme – Administration support required
Speaking of the Webinar programme, we are looking at someone to provide the administration to help get these off the ground. We estimate it will take about 6 hours support for each of the six webinars. As we are providing these free to members we are trying to keep our costs to a minimum but are prepared to pay £100 per webinar for someone to provide the admin to get these running.
If you are interested in helping with this, please get in touch by emailing info@adso.co.uk and we can give you more detail as to what is involved.
Book launch
Professor Robin Hambleton of University of the West of England who spoke at last year’s conference has written a new book called ‘Cities and communities beyond COVID-19. How local leadership can change our future for the better‘.
It was launched virtually and here is the link if you want to read more details about it: https://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/events/cities-and-communities-beyond-covid-19/
Forum
The following topics caught my attention this week:
- Remote Meetings: Public Attendance/Participation; Screen Breaks for Participants
- Training for new DSOs
- And an interesting Hypothetical Scenario posted by James Mclaughlin
John Lynch, Director of Finance