The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) is, in partnership with its national stakeholders, updating the existing training strategy for local (parish and town) councils and wants your views!
The survey forms a pivotal element of the National Training Strategy (NTS) review, and was kicked off in December. It is open to anyone, especially those people and organisations with an interest, commitment or role in local government and can be found on the homepage of the NTS website or ‘hub’.
Originally developed and published in 2001, the current strategy for local council clerks and councillors evolved from the Rural White Paper which recognised the important role of the first tier of local government and proposed a number of initiatives to develop their capabilities and skills.
Nine years on and much has been achieved and delivered, but the time is now right to review and refresh the learning and development focus and publish, in the spring, an updated strategy for the most local level of government and democracy.
NALC’s Neil Evans says “I’m hoping for as many people as possible across local government to complete the survey so that we get a varied but comprehensive picture of training and learning needs.”
“As well as the online survey, which is open until end February 2010, we held a number of focus groups with stakeholders and delivery partners such such as county associations of local councils and SLCC (Society of Local Council Clerks).
“This was to get their much needed and expert input on the future training needs of our 9,000 local councils and their 4,000 clerks and 80,000 local councillors in England.
“Most local councillors put themselves forward for election because they wanted to make a difference to their local area. They do a terrific job and to help them keep doing this and being as effective as possible, it is important that they have access to a variety of training and development opportunities.
“I hope as many people as possible complete the survey and I’m very excited about reading the results,“ says Neil.
