Monday, 12 February 2007

Office re-entry

I arrived at the office today a little before 9:00 am: my first day in the office for nearly a week.

The most pressing need was to complete preparations for tomorrow’s presentation. First, I spoke with Ann from Stevenage CVS – she had attended Friday’s meeting discussing LAA targets with Hertfordshire County Council and she updated me on progress: I was pleased that at last there appears to be some progress.

I also spoke with HCC direct and then Helen (our Volunteer Centre co-ordinator) and I spent an hour comparing notes and thoughts.

After this, I began drawing together the presentation but at 2:00 pm I had to adjourn to spend some time with Sue discussing WCVS’s accounting policies and procedures. We also discussed the new membership forms I’d mocked up and we made good progress. Then I tried to catch up on three days of e-mails including many that needed urgent responses. I did what I could.

Helen and I met again at about 5:00 pm. Then I spoke again with Andrew at Hertfordshire County Council and I am pretty happy that Helen and I will give a good account of ourselves tomorrow.

Pathfinder status

There has been much recent talk on the development of local government with both “unitary” authorities and “two-tier” authorities. Hertfordshire has applied to the government to become a “pathfinder” for two-tier government – becoming a model for others to follow. This is the most tried and trusted structure for local government and it’s nice that Hertfordshire has committed itself to this model.

But two-tier structures have to tackle new and strange projects such as Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic Partnerships. There is little guidance available and no centuries old tradition on which to fall back: we are all just making it up as we go along.