The last two months have whizzed by so here’s a double dose …
A couple of committees that I am on don’t necessarily meet that often, one being Trustees. As a council we ‘look after’ and deal with dishing out money on behalf of a number of trusts. It’s very satisfying to be able to give students and community groups a helping hand.
Another is Democratic Services which is basically there to provide support to all of us councillors. It’s likely that we’ll be meeting more often leading up to the local elections next year as one of our tasks will be to plan the induction for new councillors. Whilst we can base this on previous years it’s always worth checking to see where we can lessen the steep learning curve, but at the same time make sure the essentials are covered as soon as possible after councillors are elected. And of course it’s still very useful for returning councillors, as there’s always something new to come across, or maybe a different way of looking at some aspect of our work.
Talking of ‘new’, I yet again did something 
for the first time when I attended the Scrutiny Committee to report back on the work being done by the Digital Inclusion working group. I first chaired this 4 years ago, looking into how well the council supports the public in being able to access IT, whether on a laptop, smart phone, pad or whatever. We had agreed we would revisit this, and finally managed it earlier this year. And as technology keeps marching forward at such a pace we will be taking a regular check, probably once a year. No doubt I’ll keep you posted!
Les
