Weekly update from Vice Chair, Dave Burn

This week’s newsletter is published just two weeks ahead of our conference. It only seems like a couple of months ago that the ADSO massive were up strutting their funky stuff – and that was before the disco! In this week’s newsletter we have:

Scrutiny Guidance – our response

As you may recall, the response to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee inquiry into overview and scrutiny has been a lengthy process. We submitted comments to the inquiry and submitted comments to Government Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, on their subsequent findings into the Select Committee’s findings.

Colleagues will be aware that our Chair, John Austin, attended the roundtable discussion with other organisations including Centre for Public Scrutiny, arranged by MHCLG in September 2018. It was at that session that guidance content was sought and we have just submitted our response to MHCLG,

. Colleagues will have seen the comments on the forum. We have included those comments as well as others. The content of the response is based on our collective experience, which is why we are pleased to have been able to work with MHCLG and, more importantly, grateful for your invaluable contributions.

Please keep the conversation going. If you have any comments or points you wish to highlight please either contact me and/or post them on the forum. London held their regional meeting last Thursday, where they had a good discussion, we will send these and any additional comments to the MHCLG.

 

Conference – update

Conference is looking to be one of our best attended and I am pleased that we have an exciting programme to match. Our plenary speaker on day one has just been confirmed, Dominic Campbell, Interim Chief Digital Officer at Homes England and CEO at FutureGov.

Colleagues work very hard putting the conference together and my thanks go to Sue Keogh our Director of Development, Wayne Chandai our Director of Communications and our regional representatives and many others involved behind the scenes. It is very much a team effort helping to ensure the conference is a success. I look forward to seeing you all there. If you have not booked a place as yet please do so.