Transcript

by Councillor Bodrell Chowdhury, who again I'm sure will be here very shortly, and apologies from Councillor Harun Miah. I think that's all, Chair. If I could pronounce it correctly for a little minute. And all we've done. John, please could I see the person that you were referring to has just started a new job? Hello, it's Shupriya Iqbal, it's me. You can see me now. Hello. Oh yes, great, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. No problem, I didn't specifically say hello to Linda, because we can see you there, but hello Linda, anyway. Hello, hello, nice to see you as always. Thank you. Declarations of interest, anyone? Minutes of the previous meeting. I don't know that I'm sad that I couldn't find any typos this time, but well done, Joel. I think it's pretty... Can we agree them as a true and correct record then? Yes. Oh, Fiona, sorry. Chair, do you want to take your microphone off? Okay, so hopefully this is a straightforward report. The government recently, yes, no, maybe, or whatever. So the paper here is really to decide whether, as a committee, the committee would send a joint submission to this. Don't have to. Often it's left to political groups or interested parties to make a submission. We are going to leave before 10, because we are going to go to all 40 questions. No, we're not. But Matthew knows, because we've had our prior discussion, that my view is, page 22D, a member of the public. So we couldn't submit as members of the public, but I think it would have more weight if it came from... And would the committee, if a small group of committee members were to meet to discuss, then that would mean that the other members of the committee had delegated it, or would the draft response have to come back to the committee? ...online meeting, but who could make submissions by email, or phone me up and say, and, you know, who actually have some proper sanctions. Yeah. The new government appears to be of that view, and I think that's appropriate, he says. Yes, Chair, I mean, given that we are on the Standards Advisory Committee, I think having a consensus between us makes total sense. What hill are you willing to die on? Actually, I don't think that there are too many questions where we rule for that. And we can always say... Sorry, withdraw the word violent. Any vigorous disagreement? Okay, so we rely on some combination of officers to contact with some dates, and we'll move from there. Thank you, Matthew. John, are you intending you would be online? Yes. Yeah. I think that's the only practical way of doing it. But not on a Sunday. Moving on, 3.2. Yes, sorry, that's me again, isn't it? Thank you, Chair. So, Item 3.2 is the yearly update member training, so they do that sort of more regularly. I've got to say who's on that. So, there's two members from each of the main groups, and the last few on the stats. Historically, we've just kind of given you our member development plan for the year. Bodrell Chowdhury came out top as those who attend the most training sessions. So, well done, both of you. The whip now, you'll be at everything, won't you? Yeah. But, of course, it depends a little bit on what people are interested in and what they may already know, and so, you know, there's all sorts of reasons why it's to May 2026. It's just draft at the moment. One thing we do need to do is, and I'll come back to personal development plans, but we have a... So, anyone who completes a PDP, yeah, absolutely. The LGA courses at Warwick are definitely within that, and yes, I'd encourage it. We do get good feedback from those. Matthew, could you give me some examples, and what does the LGA courses consist of? Hi there. Evening. I was the chair of the education committee, so I went on the education side of it for a couple of days, twice in two years. So, it's just building up my knowledge and expertise from other counsellors, other people around the country. So, it was very helpful as the chair of that committee. So, it was very, very, very useful to me. Thank you. Well, it's kind of learning about how the school's system works, and... Systems, and learning, and managing, and chairing skills, a lot of things into it. Yeah, that sounds great. Learning from other counsellors. It was extremely... Yeah. A couple of days. Nice. Yes. Thank you. Sounds really good. Have you got any examples, Matthew, of what people have asked for outside this core programme? So, we haven't been through all of the... They're in the reports. So, I think there are a lot of counsellors with ambitions to develop themselves as counsellors. So, they're looking at sort of leadership-type skills and becoming a more senior counsellor, that kind of thing. That's quite popular. Public speaking, sort of how to present yourself in a big, like a counselling or those sorts of environments, that's quite popular as well. There's also a little bit on nitty-gritty, sort of IT, and sort of anything from how to do emails to how to... What is that? It gives themes of these are the sorts of things that people are interested in. There's a couple of references here, but with the steering group, we need to go through that in a bit more detail, and then we can report that back up here as well, because that's quite interesting. Very interesting. Thank you. Vision, managing performance, excellence in leadership, that kind of thing. I thought 317 was... I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Occasionally, the report also said only a limited number of clear development priorities were already provided for counsellors since the elections. I promise I didn't pay him to say that. Yeah, okay. That's what I was... Yeah. Okay, thank you. And then the other half of this is that after somebody's completed a PDP, we are encouraging people to think about mentoring and coaching options. Again, it's open to everyone. Obviously, it depends on where you go, so the LGA provides a peer... Pro bono, no cost. I like no cost. Trish, do you want to make a note of that one? Yeah, no, seriously, we'll have a look. Thank you. And then the other thing, new thing to highlight is the role profiles that we've now got on the website. We've been doing stuff around to go and do something slightly different, so do look out for that. Yeah, that's very important. And, right, yes, going back to report on it last year. And to gain some kind of external assurance that our member development program is decent, isn't it? And they were sharing then contact details and all of that kind of stuff. So whether that's just they build up contacts within their communities and they go back and do community stuff, that's great campaign. Sorry, Matthew. Sorry. Thank you, Chair. Do you have how many on the data, how many men or women turned up to be a councillor? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, well, the second one is easy, the women's event, because I was the only man in the room. So the other event, I don't have the exact figure, but it was roughly 50-50 on the first one. And, indeed, a few of the women at the first one came along again to the second one and asked different questions and things. So, Matthew, do you know how many of the councillors have achieved the charter mark nationally at all? Where? In London, I think. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I'm just wondering, just sticking with be a councillor sessions, are we going to continue to put these sessions on and sort of how can we learn from the initial sessions? It does sound like it went really well. I had back on the very first one that I think there was maybe a couple of, you know what I mean? So just how can we make sure it all goes as smoothly as possible and learn from this couple and if we're going to continue it? Yeah, good question. Yes, so the first session got a bit more political, shall we say, than was intended. And we did actually change how we did the second session to, and that worked much better. So that they can do all the asking of questions and know what they're getting themselves into. So that might be, we haven't made a decision, but that feels like it's more going to be that. Yeah, because the danger is you do a, would you like to be a kid that they fed back and we've updated because these things can take time. At the Chartermark level, that should be all right. There's a Chartermark Plus level where you might have to go. It's more difficult to show that we've improved things because of what we got to a particular session. There are things we've got. So, for example, after the Member Induction Programme, we did a survey with members. Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I mean, I think we would like to get the Chartermark Plus, but there are things in it that we haven't started working on. Yes, this is a very easy one because there's been no dispensations. I mean, obviously, the report explains when a dispensation would be granted and such like. But over the last six months, no dispensations have been granted. I think we all attend an awful lot of iftars during Ramadan. And I think Councilor Huston is right. Actually, the cost probably doesn't really actually. We make it a little bit clearer in the guide. I think that would probably solve that. And part of the reason as well to ask the question was just we don't necessarily go to the iftar event. And it may be members that they'll know more than us. It's very rare. It's from the same organization. You know, I make sure I'm at home for half of it or the keys will change. My missus will be very upset. Thank you. I take your point. There do seem to be, not a lot, but there do seem to be a fair. On the work plan as well, the point about the bulletin. So we did do some work to try and make sure people were receiving the bulletin, the member bulletin, every Friday. Is there anyone in this room who isn't getting the member bulletin on a Friday? To check whether people are voting them. Are you still doing that? The members can discuss detail of the report. Alternatively, the advisory committee could choose to stay in an open session. All right. They'd still be part of it. It's just the public wouldn't. Yeah, I thought there was some serious exclusion on offer there, John. Sorry. Sorry, my misunderstanding. So we're agreeing that we'll turn off the... If that's a motion you're proposing, can I just check if there's a seconder? Yes. And the advisory committee is happy to agree.