Rochford District Council arranges a lot of training sessions during the year for councillors. They are mainly intended for district councillors, though some parish councillors can come as as well if they want to. The training sessions cover a wide range of topics. Some are closely related to council work, such as updates on licensing law. Others are more general, such as reducing the district’s carbon footprint. Others cover tools and techniques, such as time management, public speaking and chairing meetings.
Some of us find them really useful, some of us find it frustrating that we get all this training but are able to do less actual council work because of the cabinet system!
Anyway, the council has now produced a list of how many sessions each councillor has attended during this civic year. So all credit to Conservative Councillors Mike Carter (Hockley) and Barbara Wilkins (Great Wakering) who attended the most sesions – 19 out of a possible 22.
Now, nearly all of these sessions are voluntary. However, there were three sessions on town planning and we all supposed to attend at least two of them, to ensure that we are all fully briefed on planning rules before voting on a planning application.
From this May new rules will be enforced – if you don’t attend two planning training sessions, you won’t be able to vote on planning applications unless you can a special dispensation – e.g. because of illness.
We are pleased to report that all the Lib Dem councillors attended at least two sessions this year. However a total of eight Conservatives didn’t – three from Hullbridge, two from Trinity Ward Rayleigh, one from Hawkwell North, one frm Wakering and one from Rochford.
We are sure that all fit and well councillors will attend enough training sessions in future! But if the rules had been enforced this year, we would have had a situation where none of the Hullbridge councillors, and neither of the Trinity Ward councillors, could vote on planning applications – even if they affected their area.
As a Parish Councillor I sometimes take the opportunity to attend these sessions to gain a better understanding of what happens at district level. This is useful for a Parish Councillor as often we are peoples first port of call and we do have to have some working knowledge of district matters.I have found that the officers do put in a lot of effort to provide an informative and well presented session.