Contact your Parish Council

PARISH COUNCIL TRAINING ON THE CODE OF CONDUCT.

After much delay, the first course was due to take place on the 27 July. However, due, I believe to the short notice of the email sent out to Parishes, only 6 applied and the course was cancelled.

The next course was scheduled for the 16 September, and in the interim, I wrote to all Chairs, urging them to encourage their members to attend. On the night some 13 Councillors attended, and the event was hailed a success by them. The format of the evening was simply to show them the DVD, and to follow that with a question and answer session. One of the suggestions made was that we held these courses outside of Maidstone, and I am awaiting feedback from the Parishes on suggested clusters, and hosts within those clusters. As members are aware, the e-mail sent out restricted attendance to 2 from each Parish, this has now been removed. My thanks to Bill Stead, David Marchant and Paul Fisher for their input.

The next session was on the 7 October, and some 30 Councillors booked to attend. Unfortunately the weather that evening was very wet and only 20 turned up. The other problem we had,  was that the Training Team did not send anyone to the event, and the equipment malfunctioned and we could not show the DVD in its entirety. There were however lots of questions, and a desire to see the DVD in full. We took forward the discussion we had in the first session about mentoring for Parish Clerks, and I have since had an e-mail from Pauline Bowdery the clerk at Boxley who is keen to get something going. Paul Fisher has a copy of her suggestions, and I awaiting a response from the Officer dealing. I have also asked Paul to ensure that we always have backup from Training for the first part of the evening.

We have been asked to run a daytime session for Clerks only, and I have suggested doing another session in November, whilst we have the momentum, but as I write this, I am still awaiting feedback.I have suggested we rename the sessions “Code of Conduct Forum”.

As part of our ongoing requirement to provide training on the Code of Conduct, I would like a member of the Committee to take on the role of Training Co-ordinator, covering, Borough, Parishes and the Standards Committee. Do I have a volunteer?

DJW