The usual plus another first

At Audit – now renamed Governance & Audit (what a mouthful!) – had an interesting debate on how many there should be on the committee when from next May a third of them will need to be ‘lay’ members ie not councillors.  The Senedd has been advocating smaller committees for a while now, but you need to balance that with having enough to cover unavoidable absences to ensure each meeting has enough in attendance to go ahead.  We settled on the same number as now, 15, which will mean 5 lay & 10 councillors.

The first of two very useful meetings in the last week, Recovery & Future Generations Policy Development Committee (another even bigger mouthful!!) had a topic on the agenda which I had asked for, looking at how the council carries out consultation & engagement.  The relevant department officers were reviewing the current strategy so it was an opportune moment for me to have my say.  I’m a process person so it’s always good to get my teeth into stuff like that.

And I also joined in a trialling session for online training module on Social Media, another first for me.  It wasn’t to do with how to get set up on it but how to make good use of it as a councillor, and what pitfalls to avoid.  It was both interesting from my perspective, and again the king of thing that I felt I could give useful feedback on.

On a lighter note the community choir Voices on the Hill restarted, which I’m happy to support as something that goes on in the ward, and also whilst it’s not really my kind of music it’s great to be singing again.

Les