Course focus

Drainage Law

Date:
06 September 2010
Venue:
ETC Venues, London
CPD:
4.5

Training programmes

General Election Training

The next UK Parliamentary General Election must be held by June 2010.  The “word on the street” is that 6 May 2010 is the favoured date and there are over 160 local authority polls scheduled to take place on that day.  There are many employed in local government who are not experienced in this field of electoral work, whatever their role as Returning Officer, Electoral Administrator or legal advisor to those people.  It is essential to be well prepared as the electoral timetable is very unforgiving and immensely challenging.

Although the MoJ have said there will be no new primary legislation before the next set of elections, significant practical lessons have been learnt from the (Combined) Euro Elections earlier this year.  Again, as with every other part of the public sector, there is considerable pressure now being brought on Returning Officers and Electoral Administrators over election finances and the need to be more efficient.  This intensive course will update and advise delegates on all these issues and address such tricky questions as:-

  • Should the Count be held on Thursday night or Friday morning?
  • What aspects of the process can be safely outsourced?
  • Are your current electoral practices compliant with the Electoral Commission standards?
  • Can your printer cope with the extra demands of a combined poll?
  • How are you going to cope with working across local government boundaries; for example, checking absent vote identifiers (many parliamentary constituency boundaries do not coincide with local authority boundaries)
  • There will be a large number of new ‘first-time’ candidates and agents at this election.  How will you put in place arrangements to provide clear and timely information to assist them?
  • Are your project and risk management plans in place? What about contingency planning and insurance cover? Do you understand the new accounting regime to be introduced as a result of the latest Parliamentary elections fees and charges order?

With a Panel of highly experienced speakers, including Philip Coppel of 4-5 Gray’s inn Square Chambers, Local Authority Expert David Monks (Regional Returning Officer, Eastern Region and Chair of the Solace Electoral Matters Panel), John Turner of the Association of Electoral Administrators and David  Cowan (former Chief Executive and Returning Officer at Winchester) of SOLACE Enterprises this intensive one day conference is the best way to prepare for all these challenges.

This Conference will be ideal for Returning Officers, Election managers and their Legal Advisors

Programme directory