ALDC Update
February – April 2012
Background
This report covers the three month period 1 November 2011– 30 April 2012, but given the importance of the local elections in this period we have included the period up to the 3 May 2012 local elections. The report is considered by ALDC’s quarterly Management Committee, and is also being made available to ALDC members, and to our key Liberal Democrat partners, but is not for further circulation.
1 AIM 1 – More Liberal Democrat Councillors at every level
Clearly the local elections on 3 May 2012 have been the primary focus for the whole ALDC team for the last three months. A separate report on the results has been produced for Management Committee and the CCC.
1.1 Candidate Support
ALDC has been collecting details of all target ward candidates for most of the year and we complete this process at the close of nominations for any gaps that remain. Before polling day we had a full data set for candidates in target wards (or previously Lib Dem held wards).
From December 2011 onwards we have been sending all candidates (that we have email addresses for) a “Candidate’s Briefing” email with increasing frequency towards the election. There will also be 2/3 briefings post election to address issues like thank yous and expenses.
We also sent out the Candidates Handbook to all candidates as we were notified of them up to the deadline for nominations and sent an additional postal mailing to all candidates in March with a “top three things to do” insert.
1.2 Financial Support
ALDC administers the G8 grants process, made up of resources from the Federal, English, Scottish and Welsh parties.
Stage 2 grants were awarded in England and Wales in January 2012 to a total of 48 local areas to reward continued campaign activity in Autumn 2011. The claims process for Stage 2 has been our main G8 administrative task in the last few months. Some remaining G8 funds were distributed in March to any local Party who committed to running a good postal vote campaign. This was a very popular process and oversubscribed.
A similar but separate process took place in Scotland where remaining funds were allocated to a small number of priority areas.
The G8 Committee met in March 2012 and considered making a a number of changes to G8 for 2013 onwards. This included looking at a “winning wards” programme (as opposed to supporting council areas), but also working on a two-year electoral horizon. It also proposed keeping a small amount of funding back for areas ‘starting out’.
1.3 Campaign Resources
During the last three months we launched packs 5 and 6 of our popular artwork packs. These are PagePlus templates for use by ALDC members in their local campaigning. We produce these in three different colour variations (full colour, 2 colour and black and white) to suit parties of all levels of resource and technology. They are only available to ALDC members and we do not make them available to anyone else.
The packs in February to April focussed on squeeze, focus templates, direct mail, the count, postal votes and polling day materials.
It has been great to see such extensive use of our templates across the country and continue to receive some great feedback. We are looking to invest in making the file library system significantly simpler so that members can find things ever more easily than now. We are hoping to automate this through our Dropbox for Teams account.
We produced one prototype “Campaign Toolkit” in March 2012 on “Operation Clean Streets” with a number of resources for campaigning on street cleaning, graffiti and litter. This was very much a first attempt at this type of product and we need to think about how we take this forward for the rest of the year.
Some thank you artwork has been circulated immediately post elections and have commissioned some ‘summer doorstep’ materials (surveys etc). We need to invite tenders for our artwork production going forward as the current provider has given notice that he needs to quit after the summer.
1.4 Development Programme
As we now have our Development Officers in post we have been able to provide a short period of support for a number of areas with elections in the run up to May.
This has been:
(North and Scotland) Trafford, Calderdale, Preston, St Helens, Angus and Renfrewshire.
(Wales, West and Midlands): Gloucester, Swindon and South East Wales authorities.
(SE, E and London) Reading, Winchester, Milton Keynes.
There was a good outcome in practically every area which was great to see.
Development Officers will be identifying areas for support over the next areas shortly for agreement before the end of May.
1.5 Intelligence and Support
We worked closely with colleagues in the rest of the Party and also with Liberal Democrats in the various programmes of the Local Government Association to ensure that there is a coordinated approach and response to the local elections in May 2012. Thinking for the May 2013 (and the November 2012) elections is already taking place.
ALDC worked closely with the Party’s press team in the run up to and aftermath of the local elections and produced a media briefing for election night itself.
A detailed analysis of the results is being prepared and this will be linked with the results of an online candidates survey which has been sent out.
1.6 Training
Our main training programme took place before Christmas, but we were involved in training at both the Federal Spring Conference, and the Scottish and Welsh state conferences and a number of English regional conferences.
Our campaigns training is now being reviewed in the light of the election results with the next major events being the Local Government Conference in June and Federal Conference in September and the weekend Kickstart in November 2012.
1.7 Post-Election Support
We coordinated our activities with the LGA’s change of control programme to
0 3 ensure that any local council areas which found themselves in NOC or another change received support immediately post-election.
We have also been involved in providing support to groups who did very badly in the elections, including the 22 new ‘black holes’ which we sadly have.
2 AIM 2 – For Liberal Democrat Councillors to be the Best
2.1 Members’ Communications
In March the post-holder in the new post of Communications Officer joined the team which has enabled us to boost the communications output of the team.
Members have continued to receive our bi-monthly Members Mailing (Local Campaigner, Factsheets, free publications etc), and our weekly Members’ email during the period.
A large part of the focus in April has been around the local elections results information which is available online with a very detailed analysis of gains and losses at an authority level
Recent improvements and changes have included:
– We are Tweeting significantly more, and specifically using Twitter to promote what we do as an organisation on a daily basis.
– We have set up an ALDC members only Facebook Group which has got off to a good start providing a place for members to discuss campaign ideas during the election campaign and the outcome of the elections.
– We now provide a regular ‘national’ story for MyCouncillor sites (which can be copied to other blogs if required) – the aim is for an average of one a week.
– Our by-election column has moved forward to a Friday, and is sent out with the results in the by-election email.
Emails to members and councillors are about to change to:
– A weekly (member only) “Weekly Briefing” email, on one particular topic which is of interest to members and appropriate to the time of year.
– A weekly “Newsletter” email to both ALDC members AND other Liberal Democrat councillors with a mixture of news about ALDC, new resources and information. Part of the content will be limited to members, with information on how to join ALDC in every email 😉
ALDC’s website is also going through a gradual change at its front end (and to accommodate the more significant changes going out at the back end). A new ‘look’ news section was installed at the end of February, and this will be rolled gradually over the rest of the front end of the site over the next three months.
2.2 Resources
In February all ALDC members were sent a free copy of our new publication “Top 10 Tips for local campaigners” which contained a whole host of ideas for being a campaigning liberal democrat at a local level and in the council chamber. We’ve received some really good feedback on this book which was written by Mark Pack and is part of the Winning with Localism Project.
Our next publication is a “Basics Guide to winning a local election” which will be circulated to members in June 2012.
The Casework module of Connect will be free for ALDC members (for ward level work), however we are having to wait for this service to work longer than perhaps was originally anticipated. Obviously the Connect team at LDHQ were 100% preoccupied with making Connect work for the elections, but we are hoping to be able to roll this out shortly.
2.3 Advice
We continue to provide advice to ALDC members on a wide variety of issues that you come across in your work as councillors and local campaigners.
Now we have a larger political staff team, each staff member takes a day a week on ‘advice cover’ for being the first point of contact for all advice calls, emails, website and Facebook interactions.
For the next three months we are about to embark on a very major upgrade to our advice product. Subject to clarifying a couple of security issues our preferred provider for this will be Uservoice – a major provider of online helpdesk services. When complete this will give our members exclusive access to an online advice and information resource, and then a managed process of advice being dealt with by staff.
2.4 Conferences
ALDC took part in the Federal Spring Conference in Gateshead in March 2012. Our fringe programme included an evening meeting follow up to our ‘Fighting Labour’ seminar held earlier in the year, and a lunchtime fringe meeting where we considered the move of public health responsibilities to local government where we were pleased to be joined by health minister Paul Burstow and the Kings Fund. We also held our annual ‘thank you’ event for volunteers and stakeholders which was addressed by Party President Tim Farron.
We undertook eight training sessions – four around winning elections themes, and a number of more focussed sessions which included a follow up seminar for cities which faced elected mayor referenda (which Nick Clegg was able to join briefly) and two seminars organised jointly with the Local Government Association (Localism Act and local economic solutions).
The Liberal Democrat Local Government Conference takes place on 16 June 2012 in Bedford, with a dinner and Group Leader events the evening and afternoon before. Nick Clegg is expected to be joining us, and a draft programme will be circulated in the next week.
2.5 Leadership and Projects
ALDC is a delivery partner for the Liberal Democrat Next Generation Programme of the Local Government Association. We have an excellent cohort of 17 Lib Dem councillors on the 2011-12 programme which next meets in London and Bedford around the Local Government Conference.
The LGA is tendering for Next Generation 7 (2012-13). ALDC is leading a bid for the work, and working with a number of existing course facilitators.
We’re also working with the LGA on two other projects this year. “Winning with Localism” will be familiar to many members in England as we develop our work as a Party around localism and making the most of the Localism Act. ALDC has also been working with the Liberal Democrat ‘Be a Councillor” programme to encourage more and more diverse range people to come forward as potential councillors.
2.6 Representing Councillors
ALDC represents its members on a number of Party and associated bodies including the Campaigns and Communications Committee, the Local Elections Team, the English Council Executive and the LGA Liberal Democrat Group.
Two key partners are the Department of Elections and Skills at LDHQ and the Liberal Democrat Group of the Local Government Association. A number of mechanisms have been put into place to ensure regular communication and most appropriate joined up working.
ALDC was pleased to meet the new Chief Executive of the Party and also welcome him to Hebden Bridge during April – the first visit of a Party Chief Executive since any of us can remember. We have also been pleased to take part in a consultation on English local party boundaries, giving the very strong view that these should use local government units as building blocks.
We have just been invited to make a submission into a CLG Committee enquiry into Councillors and the Community which is being developed during May.
3 SUPPORTING AIM – For ALDC to have the capacity to deliver, now and in the future
3.1 Membership
Membership has been a challenge for ALDC since the poor election results in May 2011 (where we lost 800 councillors) and will continue to be a challenge during 2012-13.
In the first four months of April ALDC was down net 18 members from the start of the calendar year, to 2730 at 30 April 2012. However this is down just under 200 members from the same point in 2011.
These figures hide some significant movement. There has been a slow loss of individual members throughout the year following the May 2011 elections as councillors who lost their seat’s membership comes up for renewal. We have been successful in continuing to attract and recruit new members, particularly through our candidates discount scheme and also welcoming into group membership in the last three months East Dunbartonshire and Reading (our 80th Group Member).
Our main recruitment initiatives during the period have been the recruitment of candidates through the 50% discount scheme, and also writing to all councillors NOT in group membership schemes with a model motion to their group AGM. The latter seems now to be bearing fruit with a number of enquiries coming through.
Moving forward we are making every effort to retain as many members post election as we can through a variety of schemes, and will be actively recruiting new members throughout the remainder of the year.
3.2 Money
The Management Committee set a revised budget for 2012 at its meeting in February 2012 to take account of final confirmation of our grant levels from the Federal Party (10% reduction) and the new grant from The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd (JRRT).
This budget is for a modest surplus for the year, though the Committee will need to manage the most significant risk which is that the organisation does not meet its membership targets for the year (very possible given the electoral losses in May). Some areas of expenditure may need to be curtailed during the year but with minimal impact on our end service to members.
Our accounts for 2011 have been closed and are with our auditors. These will be completed and filed with the Electoral Commission as required later in the year. The Management Committee has agreed to tender for audit servces during the summer which is currently in hand.
3.3 Team
Following the JRRT grant and to best meet the strategic priorities in 2012 a small restructuring of the staff team has taken place at the start of 2012. This has included creating new posts in Hebden Bridge of Campaigns Officer (to take a lead on the central support we provide to help Lib Dem volunteer activists campaign) and a Communications Officer (to take a lead on how ALDC best communicates, including use of social media, and also to lead on the MyCouncillor system).
Following a recruitment process during February these three new staff members (marked in bold below) have now taken up post and the whole team is:
Chief Executive: Tim Pickstone 5 days a week
Senior Political Officer: Anders Hanson 5 days a week
Campaigns Officer: John Bridges 5 days a week
Communications Officer: Craig Whittall 5 days a week
Development Officer: Mark Alcock 4 days a week
Development Officer: Mike Bell 3 days a week
Development Officer: Neil Fawcett 3 days a week
Members’ Services Officer: Emma Hall 5 days a week
Finance and Info Officer (JS): Eleanor Ritchie 3 days a week
Finance and Info Officer (JS): David Ball 3 days a week
3.4 Organisation
ALDC’s Management Committee meets in May 2012 where the main focus of discussion will be around the election results and how we move forward from them.
The Committee will also be considering preparations for the Annual General Meeting in September 2012, including considering resolutions for the membership fee for 2013 and also some new developments such as the appointment of ‘Regional Reps’ and considering electronic voting for the Management Committee elections in October 2012.
A number of policies and procedures are currently under review and development, with specific focus this year on our complaints/comments policies, and reviewing policies around staff and volunteer travel.
During February and March the organisation moved its file server to the ‘cloud’ to enable us to incorporate our out of office staff members most effectively.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have further queries, comments or ideas.
Cllr Tim Pickstone
Chief Executive
May 2012