I’m writing this just wondering how it’s possible that the elections that most of us have this year are now so close. I feel for colleagues up and down the country trying to find sufficient polling stations, polling and count staff and Covid-secure count venues. I had a planning meeting last week with elections colleagues in my capacity as the postal-vote co-ordinator for Wandsworth Council and the additional space, room layout, PPE, screens, one-way systems and staff bubbles will make our usual set-up look and feel very different this year. Good luck to everyone running elections this year.
So, let me start my newsletter in the obvious place…
Virtual meetings
You will have all, no doubt, seen the letter from Luke Hall MP, Minister of State for Regional Growth and Local Government, dated 25th March 2021, confirming that the Government does not intend to bring forward emergency legislation to allow Councils to continue with virtual or hybrid meetings beyond 7th May. The letter does not change the need for our court hearing, in fact if anything, it makes the need for it even more pressing and we are working hard with our friends at LLG and our legal advisors to prepare for the hearing in the Administrative Court in a few weeks’ time. Because of this ongoing legal process, ADSO is refraining from commenting in more detail on the letter at this stage.
We know that many Councils are already actively considering the options the Minister has suggested, including looking at alternative larger meeting venues at significant extra cost. We know that this is a huge concern for many Councils, particularly given that there is doubt as to whether these additional costs could be attributed to any Covid-related grants that Councils have received. It is, however, worth asking your finance directors if any of these costs can be re-charged to Covid grants.
We consider that the proposal to delegate significant decisions to officers is likely to be viewed as undermining democratic accountability due to the fact that such decisions are not subject to direct member involvement. Given the circumstances authorities find themselves in due to the imminent loss of virtual meeting provision, they now face unpalatable decisions, which include restricting member attendance and a reduction in members roles in decision making, whilst attempting to keep the machinery of local government moving.
We remain fully committed to presenting our case at the High Court Hearing timetabled to be heard before the end of April 2021. We will keep you all updated as the legal process goes on.
In the meantime, I was interviewed by Tom van der Hoven from IIMC earlier this month as part of a series of interviews he is conducting with colleagues in the UK, Europe and North America on my experiences of virtual meetings and the likely challenges of running hybrid meetings. If you’re interested in seeing what I said, here is the link: https://youtu.be/XbuJHumZsII
2021 Conference
At the Board meeting last Friday, we agreed that the 2021 conference will go ahead but as a virtual conference, held over two consecutive half-days – likely to be Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, so very similar to our in-person conferences and that the cost of attending the conference will be £70 per person. We discussed the outline programme and will confirm this as soon as possible once the remaining speaker and workshop spaces have been filled. We hope as many colleagues as possible will be able to participate in this year’s conference. Check the website for further details and booking arrangements shortly.
ADSO Awards
At our Board meeting in December and again last Friday, we considered whether to make a change to our normal pattern of only having the awards every two years. We thought that it might make sense for the individual awards (Learner and Rookie) to be awarded annually – together with a new ‘distinguished service’ award category; with the team of the year continuing on a biennial basis. Feedback from all of the regions is vital before we make such a decision and whilst we’ve received some feedback already, we want to hear more. If you’d like to submit views about the future for our awards, please complete this short survey: https://forms.gle/jFXiH8REyQsCZnGX7 by no later than Friday 9th April.
Training Programme and webinars
We continue to work hard to re-purpose our training courses to operate successfully in a virtual world and to continue with our successful webinar programme. One of our new courses this year is the Introduction to Democratic Services; aimed at those colleagues who are brand new to the sector, which will be run for the first time in May.
All webinar recordings and PowerPoint presentations are now available on the website along with Guidance notes covering the pre-election period kindly provided by Mark Heath. You can access these on our Webinar programme page below:
https://www.adso.co.uk/adso-training/webinar-programme/
Use of Reserves to support our Members
Following the question raised at last year’s AGM, the Board has considered ways in which it could use some of its reserves to support the wider membership. At last week’s Board meeting, we have agreed to move forward with the following initiatives:
- Reduce the cost of membership for part time staff to £30 +VAT per annum.
- Allow those who are self-funding their ADSO qualifications to pay quarterly, interest free.
- The introduction of Bursaries. Initially, there is a pot of £5,000 per annum, which could either be used to fund 100% of qualification fees or offer to match-fund an authority contribution.
These initiatives are only possible because of the careful way in which ADSO has managed its finances over a number of years and we will consider further ways in which resources can be ploughed back into additional services for members.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
The Board considered ways in which ADSO could strengthen its commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in all of its activities and an initial paper was considered at last week’s Board meeting, which prompted a positive and constructive discussion amongst Board colleagues. We’ve agreed that a sub-group of the Board will consider this in greater detail and suggest a range of short, medium and longer-term goals for consideration at our next meeting.
Members’ Forum
The forum continues to be a terrific source of information, best practice and advice for Councils. As you can imagine, virtual meetings are the main source of forum posts and it’s good to see many colleagues sharing their experiences. There’s an interesting post from Linda Scott in Newcastle asking if anyone has developed an induction plan for new DSOs; please contribute to that if you can.
Sue Keogh
Last, but by certainly no means least, Sue Keogh has decided to stand down as our Qualifications Manager from June of this year. Sue was one of the founding directors of ADSO and involved right from the start with training and qualifications. It has been an absolute pleasure working with Sue. Everyone on the Board will miss Sue very much and we paid tribute at last week’s Board meeting to the tremendous effort she has made over many years to support our learners and training courses. Thank you Sue 😊
Peter Sass, Vice-Chair