Tag Archives: councillors
Stand and deliver
Anyone who knows me knows I’ve got a lot of time for the tens of thousands of people up and down the country who get involved and make a difference in their community as local councillors. That’s a lot of people, in a lot of places, doing a whole lot of stuff. I for one […]
Big Society #4: The importance of good governance
To quote the now infamous line during the General Election TV debates: ‘I agree with Nick’. Except in this case it’s not Nick, it’s Rory – more specifically Rory Stewart, the new MP for Penrith and the Border and Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on local democracy. NALC is currently working with the […]
The Big Society #2: Strengthening local leadership
Okay, so one of the things the Big Society thing revolves around is an agenda to empower communities to come together to address local issues. This is to be achieved by giving new powers and rights to neighbourhood groups, quoted by the Coalition Government as the ‘little platoons’ of civil society and the building blocks […]
Twitter and local councils
Whilst the use of social media/networking is steadily growing in local government, it would be fair to say that it hasn’t exactly exploded within the first tier of local government. This may not be such a bad thing as local (parish and town) councils are cautious and risk averse creatures, perhaps rightly so many would […]
The Sussex Experience
Earlier this week I spent two days in Sussex to accompany our Chairman, Councillor Michael Chater as he hosted a visit by the Rural Advocate and Chair of the Commission for Rural Communities, Dr Stuart Burgess. My colleague Crispin Moor, Whitehall Director at CRC was also part of the visiting delegation to see local democracy […]
NALC Leadership Academy Pilot
A first for my blog in the shape of a guest post, an article from our Learning and Skills Manager, Neil Evans on a recent pilot leadership academy: In partnership with the Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA), NALC ran its first leadership pilot programme in November 2008 at Warwick University’s prestigious business […]
New power of well being for local councils
The statutory guidance on the new well being power for local councils, along with associated training support, was launched at our County Training Partnership event in London last week. This exciting enabling power now comes to the tier of local government closest to the community after much lobbying by NALC and partners such as SLCC. […]
Rural and Parish Matters
Yesterday our Chairman, Councillor Michael Chater, and I attended South Gloucestershire Council’s inaugural conference for local councils. The turnout was very good indeed – around 80 hardy souls turned out to come together to discuss all things local government in this part of the west country. Even the weather forecast, with snow predicted in the […]
Justin's #hyperlocal democracy blog 