Its been a busy couple of weeks here at SALC liaising with colleagues across the County Association network to find out more about impact of the formation of unitary authorities across the UK from a range of perspectives. We anticipated that our members would want to know more about the proposed changes and the briefing paper linked above explains the position, so in addition SALC have been focussing on learning from others, and will continue to do that.
We have now met with Somerset, Cumbria and Cornwall Associations of Local Councils, one of our local MPs (more dates in the diary), Suffolk CC and attended briefings to parishes by Babergh/Mid Suffolk. We have added value to those sessions and grateful for the invite and opportunity to work together. We understand West Suffolk Councils have had a parish liaison meeting which we hope was informative and they and East Suffolk Council are in contact with us too.
We went to a County Officer Forum last week which resulted in a number of other County Associations wanting to collaborate on a range of issues so we share the learning, approach, templates and support each other to avoid duplication and ensure there is efficiency with time. This includes a webinar aimed at our larger council network which SALC are hosting with 13 other county associations inviting their larger councils too. We will be sharing our learning from this across our membership.
We are keeping abreast of NALC activities and updating them on what is happening in Suffolk to ensure there is a good flow of information.
So what next?
Whilst it is still very early days, it is timely that we have a SALC Board meeting coming up which includes our annual strategic review. As a reminder, the Board is made up of representatives from across the county (councillors and officers) and they will work with the team on future plans. It should be no surprise that devolution is the topic this year.
Our work so far is enabling us to have a better understanding of what the change might look and feel like based on previous models. However, we have no information or detail of what the Suffolk framework might be at the present time.
We need your help
We are now going to gather data that expands the information we currently hold about local councils in Suffolk. We would like councils to look out for our requests over the next couple of months and respond accordingly. We will share more information about this shortly and publish progress on our dedicated page.
In the meantime we await news from Suffolk's request, expected in a few weeks, and I hope these updates are useful.
Sally Longmate
CEO, Suffolk Association of Local Councils