Going to #localgovcamp in Birmingham at the weekend has both inspired and motivated me where my blog is concerned. The great people I met there (all passionate about social media and local government) also made me feel quite guilty, so the pledge I made at the end of the event was to update my blog on Monday.

So I’m getting the ball rolling again with another whistle-stop tour of some NALC and local councils stuff since my last post:

…….we’ve now launched our new e-Bulletin for county associations which seems to have been well received and has helped to improve our communications…….Tadley Town Council in Hampshire became the first local council in England to become eligible to use the new well being power (more details on the power in one of my previous posts)…….our Chief Executive was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours…….the Local Democracy Bill is still making it’s way through Parliament and we’ve been pressing some amendments to improve and strengthen the Bill…….I’ve become an avid fan of Twitter and it’s really helping me listen to all kinds of stuff going on out there, and to share more widely some of our own work and activity…….our successful Bursary Scheme for clerks to smaller sized local councils has been relaunched…….elections have taken place for brand new local councils in Neston in Cheshire, Fleetwood in Lancashire and Bradford Trident in Bradford, bringing grassroots local democracy, services and voice to people in those areas…….we jointly published with CRC some ‘new tools in the box’ for local councils on securing effective engagement in new unitary areas, with associated guidance and case studies…….and the Digital Britain report has been launched and I’m keen to explore and discuss further what this means to our local councils and their councillors.

There’s obviously loads more stuff to mention as I (and all my colleagues at NALC) have been really busy since my last update, but I’ll post on these, thus forcing me to kickstart my blogging!

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