My very best wishes to everyone running elections next week. For Wandsworth Council, I am the DRO for postal votes so am already in the midst of daily verification and opening sessions for an expected haul of 35,000 to 40,000 completed postal votes. I am sick of the sight of them already! We’re also putting the finishing touches to our Member Induction and Development programmes for Wandsworth and Richmond Councils which begins on the Monday after the elections. Roll on the end of May once the two Annual Meetings are out of the way!
Remote meetings
ADSO and LLG have just published a joint statement on remote meetings here:
ADSO-LLG Joint Statement on Remote Meetings – 27 April 2022
extension: pdf
This comes because of the lack of response from Government to their own ‘call for evidence’ nearly a year ago on local authority remote meetings. ADSO will keep the pressure up on Government to legislate to give Councils the choice of how to run their meetings. We are also working with Mumsnet to spread the word amongst their membership and encouraging them to lobby their local councillors and MPs.
ADSO Awards
The 2022 ADSO Awards will launch in May. Keep an eye on the website to see how to nominate colleagues for this year’s awards, which will be presented in person at our conference in November. Good luck to all of the nominees.
Annual Conference
The draft programme for conference is complete and we will be publishing that plus details of how to book your place very soon. It would really help if you could book early this year to ensure that we can meet our contractual commitment with the venue particularly in terms of hotel rooms. It will also enable John Lynch to sleep at night!
Webinars
And finally, a plug for the next webinar on 20 May at 10.30am. The topic is the model Code of Conduct presented by Paul Hoey. Registrations are open here:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6297938155073450508
Peter Sass, ADSO Vice Chair