The House of Commons has finally been able to agree on something and we now have an election on 12th December. I’m sure you have all been preparing for some time as it was a question of when rather than if.
We have as a result been considering the situation regarding our conference in November. We realise that the election will cause difficulties for some who have registered as delegates and who are involved in election preparations. We thought it would therefore be helpful to let you know our position with regard to the conference. It will be going ahead but unfortunately we cannot offer refunds on the registration fee to any delegate who may now have problems attending due to election work. This is because we are contractually committed to costs and would not get any refund from the hotel 3 weeks before the event. However, we are happy for you to nominate a colleague from your authority to attend in your place as long as you/they let us know the changes to dietary requirements by the 9th November as we need to let the hotel know our final details on the 11th November.
If you cannot now attend and have booked a room at the Holiday Inn, Bristol Filton using the block code given on our website, you will not be charged for your room booking if you cancel up to 48 hours before the event as this was negotiated as a flexible rate. The hotel will have taken details of a credit card to book your room, but this is not charged until you actually check in.
Moving on to non-conference matters, a reminder please to let me know (via the members’ forum) if your Monitoring Officer or Deputy are not lawyers. We have had some replies but I’m sure there are many more authorities out there who have non legal MOs and Deputies. So please let me know if you fall into that category.
Please also see my post on the proposed new Councillors Code of Conduct following the Committee on Standards in Public Life report. As part of our work on the joint ADSO/LLG/SLCC Taskforce, we want to hear from you as to what should be in the new model code. The Local Government Association has been given the job of drafting the new Code and the Taskforce met recently with the LGA and Civil Servants to discuss the process and timescale. We have had to work hard to get ADSO involved and have a voice at the table so I want to ensure that we make a meaningful contribution to the process. So please let me have your views via the forum post. Please don’t leave it to others.
I have just had a quick look on the forum and it’s good to see that colleagues are getting responses to their queries. That’s key to the success of the forum. There are a couple where replies are needed. Sarah Selway from Teignbridge has asked if anyone has a spreadsheet that their members use to fill out claims for carers allowances. Leanna McPherson from Barking and Dagenham has posted that her authority is at the end of their latest whole Council transformation project of council services and the Overview and Scrutiny Committee has been asked to review what has/hasn’t been done. She is asking if anyone else has gone through a transformation process recently and if any of your Scrutiny Committees have looked into it. Please reply to these and others if you can.
Have a good week and I hope the election preparations go well.
And of course, the best of luck to England in the Rugby. We’ll know the result by the time you read this so we may be World Champions at Rugby as well as Cricket. That leaves the football – perhaps we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that!
John Austin
ADSO Chair