Vodafone Rural Open Sure Signal Programme

Vodafone has announced the next phase of Rural Open Sure Signal programme. The new national programme will give up to 100 rural communities across the UK the opportunity to apply for Vodafone 3G mobile coverage in their area.   Vodafone are encouraging communities to nominate a Village Champion to lead the application process with the support of their individual Parish Councils.

Please see more information below or visit  www.vodafone.co.uk/rural for more details 

Applications close on 14 October 2014.              

The Vodafone Rural Open Sure Programme will give up to 100 rural communities across the UK, with little or no mobile coverage, the opportunity to apply to have Vodafone 3G mobile coverage in their area. 

Vodafone’s initial Rural Open Sure Signal trial, which started in 2012, has seen the connection of 12 rural communities across the UK, from Walls in the Shetland Islands to Newton St Cyres in Devon.  The communities connected so far have been enjoying mobile coverage to stay in touch with friends and families, whilst businesses - from GPs to a mussel farmer - now have mobile coverage to help make their businesses work better. Due to the success of the trial, for both consumers and small enterprises, Vodafone has decided to extend the programme to 100 further rural communities across the UK.

What is the Rural Open Sure Signal programme? In rural and remote locations across the UK, the economic case for traditional networks can be challenging.  This may be due to the geography of the area or difficulties with siting masts in places such as national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.  

Vodafone Rural Open Sure Signal programme uses ‘femtocell’ technology to provide a Vodafone 3G signal in areas where traditional mobile coverage has been unable to reach. 

About the size of a domestic broadband box  and in a range of colours (white/grey/brown), the units use existing broadband services to deliver the mobile signal needed to provide 3G coverage, where before there was little or none. The units can be installed on any number of buildings including village halls, pubs, shops and homes across the community to ensure widespread mobile coverage. 

What do the communities need to do? Vodafone are encouraging communities to nominate a Village Champion to lead the application process and ensure that the community has a number of things in place before submitting their application form.  These include ensuring the community has at least a 4MB broadband connection, which is essential as Rural Open Sure Signal units work from a broadband connection, to identifying 5-10 properties across the community, often on buildings on a hill or in a ‘community hub’, on which to site our boxes.  Application forms and full information on the programme can be found on our dedicated webpages at www.vodafone.co.uk/rural.


What’s next? Once the Village Champions have completed the applications Vodafone ask the Champion to send the application as soon as they can before the application closure date of 14 October 2014 so that Vodafone can announce the successful communities in the autumn.

For more information on the Rural Open Sure Signal programme visit  www.vodafone.co.uk/rural.

July Employment Update on Flexibility for all at work

BALC is now offering its member councils access to Bethan Osborne, an experienced HR and employment advisor. As part of that service Bethan will write a monthly article on relevant employment legislation changes that could affect your council. The full article will be placed in the Documents section of our website, under the BALC documents tab. This months article is new rights for flexible working.

WHAT DOES FLEXIBILITY FOR ALL AT WORK MEAN FOR YOUR COUNCIL?

The new Children and Families Act 2014 (effective on 30th June 2014) extended the right to request flexible working to all employees who have at least 26 weeks service. The full article answers all the questions below

Why now?
What is Flexible Working?
What is changing?
What is the new process? 
What reasons can be used to reject a request?
Why should our council agree to a request?
What are the risks of saying “no”?
What should my council do next?
How does this apply to my council when I only work 5 hours per week? 
How does this apply to my council if I might be over 65?  

Further legislative changes under the Children and Families Act 2014 come into effect in April 2015 where maternity and paternity leave rights are being revised to allow Shared Parental Leave. This will give the right to both parents to share the undertaking of childcare in the first year of a baby’s life by being allowed a statutory right to paid time off work.  This topic will be explored in greater depth in next month’s bulletin.

Prepared by Bethan Osborne, HR Consultant and employment advisor to BALC and member councils.

Important! Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014

Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 – this means filming, blogging and tweeting of your council meeting

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will shortly be issuing a revised Plain English Guide to the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014 to coincide with the implementation of these Regulations at the end of July/first week in August. The Draft Guide is here. DCLG has sought to regularise what it sees as an anomaly in that reporting was allowed in the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Access to Information) (England) Regulations of 2012 for local authorities with executive arrangements which excluded town and parish councils. DCLG view this as a logical extension of open and transparent democracy.

These Regulations introduce two important requirements:

•    Allowing people to film, blog, tweet or use other types of social media to report on council meetings; and the
•    Recording of delegated decisions made by officers under instruction of the council.

The regulations were not put out for general consultation, bodies such as Local Government Association, NALC, Society of Local Council Chief Executives (SOLACE)  and Lawyers in Local Government (LLG) were asked for their observations. The responses were not entirely in favour. The Local Government Association opposed them and commented that “the Government’s approach, as set out in the draft Regulations, appears completely contrary to the principles of Localism and is in fact micro-management of the sector.” NALC and OALC while supporting open democracy believe that both aspects of the Regulations may impose significant burdens on small parish councils and could inhibit councillors and the public speaking if they believe they will be filmed. One of the main concerns is the potential for malicious editing and therefore misrepresentation.

We understand that DCLG has not been persuaded by these concerns. The Explanatory Memorandum, holds to the belief that “localism requires robust local scrutiny and local accountability”, and that “allowing the public to attend and report meetings promotes healthy democracy and should not be seen as an intrusion [which does not create] burdens on the councils or local government bodies.”

Briefing – book your place now.

 We are waiting for a briefing from NALC on this but in the meantime BALC and Oxfordshire Association of Local Councils have taken the initiative and organised a morning briefing from Liz Howlett on Thursday 2nd October. This will be at Didcot, Civic Hall, 9.30-12.30pm cost £35 + VAT per member council delegate. Booking forms and details have been sent to all member council clerks.

Govt negotiate support for Windows XP, Office 2003 for parish councils

The government has signed a deal with Microsoft to provide Windows XP support and security updates across the whole UK public sector for 12 months after regular support for the operating system ends on 8 April 2014.

The agreement  covers critical and important security updates for Windows XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003, all of which have reached end of life in Microsoft’s normal product cycles.

Parish councils are eligible under the extended support arrangements for Microsoft XP as negotiated by Crown Commercial Service.

More information in an article from Computer Weekly

West Berkshire Council site allocations consultation

West Berkshire Council are consulting on two important documents:

Housing Site Allocations Development Plan Document (DPD) Preferred Options

This document allocates specific smaller scale housing sites to meet the remainder of the 10,500 housing figure identified in the adopted Core Strategy DPD. These sites will be in those areas defined by the adopted Core Strategy’s settlement hierarchy as urban areas, rural service centres or service villages.

Sites for gypsies, travellers and travelling showpeople will also be allocated in the DPD, and a revised policy for Sandleford Park strategic site allocation and residential parking policy for new development will also be included. The criteria which we intend to use to revise settlement boundaries is also being published for consultation. Policies to guide development in the countryside will be subject to consultation in the autumn.

West Berkshire Council is holding a seven week informal consultation period between Friday 25 July and Friday 12 September 2014.  

Draft Planning Obligations SPD

West Berkshire Council currently seeks developer contributions in accordance with our ‘Delivering Investment from Sustainable Development’ Supplementary Planning Document (SPD).  The SPD provides guidance, to those wishing to develop in West Berkshire, about the level and scope of developer contributions likely to be required from development of 1 new dwelling or more, or commercial development accommodating 10 or more employees. 

The SPD has recently been updated to provide guidance for the development industry about the much reduced use of developer contributions after the Council’s implementation of the Community Infrastructure Levy on 1 April 2015. 

Comments are now sought on the draft SPD between Friday 25 July and Friday 12 September 2014.

Councils now is the time to start thinking about getting people to stand for election May 2015

The National Association of Local Councils kicked off its campaign to get more people to stand for election as parish and town councillors in 7th May 2015, urging a new generation of neighbourhood leaders to step forward and make a difference in their area.

Tens of thousands of seats on England’s most local level of Government – parish and town councils – are up for grabs on the same day as the General Election. NALC wants parishes to improve their democratic mandate with an increase in the number of contested elections.

NALC started its campaign by issuing a ‘Call for ideas and practice’ to generate proposals on how to get more people involved in grassroots local democracy, urging councils themselves to come forward with successful examples.

The full article is here

Parish Pulse Survey 2014

C Locality

Last spring the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) conducted a survey, to learn more about how town and parish councils were embracing the new Community Rights which allow them to take action and to influence local services. The survey provided the Government with a valuable insight into the take-up of Community Rights and an understanding of what support would encourage more town and parish councils to make better use of the rights.

The aim of the ‘Parish Pulse Survey 2014’, one year on, is to find out what the picture looks like now for town and parish councils with Community Rights.

The Government wants parish and town councils to tell them about the activities they are doing to support Neighbourhood Planning, Community Right to Challenge and Community Right to Bid. The feedback will help to inform the Government’s work with town and parishes and shape the type of support they provide.

Stephen Williams MP, Minister, DCLG, said: “I am delighted that so many town and parish councils are taking on the opportunities presented by Community Rights to help make the ambitions of their local community become a reality. I see huge potential for councils to continue working together with their communities to build upon these successes to give local people the ability to influence the important decisions about their local area. I do recognise that there are still many councils we still need to support to make better use of the rights. For this reason, I see the Parish Pulse 2014 as a vital tool for capturing what more we can do to motivate councils to make Community Rights a reality. I would therefore encourage all town and parish councils to complete the survey and to share their experiences of Community Rights so far”.

Cllr Ken Browse, chair of NALC, responded: “The National Association urges all parish and town councils to take part in this important survey on Community Rights. We believe that the trends and feedback from this survey will help to inform the future direction that Government policy takes with regards to parish and town councils.”

The survey is open from Monday 14 July 2014 and will close on 11 August 2014: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/parishpulse2014

Berkshire Association of Local Councils is pleased to announce a new employment advice service available from 7th July 2014. Queries regarding staff issues within the council such as terms and conditions, employment rights, sickness absence, annual leave, maternity etc can now be answered by our new Employment Advisor.

This service, which is available free of charge to all member councils, will be provided by Bethan Osborne. If your council has an employment or HR related problem which you need help with please summarise it in writing and send it to me at BALC, I will forward it to Bethan. She will then get back to you with advice.

This is not unfortunately open-ended; initial advice will be free but if it is a complex or potentially time consuming problem then your council will need to enter into a contractual/consultancy arrangement with Bethan at competitive rates.

Bethan is an experienced personnel and human resources professional.  A member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; until recently she has been the National Employment Advisor for the Society of Local Council Clerks which has given her a unique understanding of our sector.

Bethan will also be providing regular updates which will be in our monthly newsletter on current changes in employment law which will affect parish councils.

We will be offering training with an employment content which will start with “Being a Good Employer – essential employment know-how for councils” on Wednesday 25th March 2015. Bookings will be opened later in the year.

Next years election May 2015 - encourage more people to become councillors

The National Association of Local Councils has started its campaign to get more people to stand for election as parish and town councillors in May 2015, urging a new generation of neighbourhood leaders to step forward and make a difference in their area.

Tens of thousands of seats on England’s most local level of Government – parish and town councils – are up for grabs on the same day as the General Election next May, and NALC wants parishes to improve their democratic mandate with an increase in the number of contested elections.

At a meeting of its governing body in London this week, NALC started its campaign by issuing a ‘Call for ideas and practice’ to generate proposals on how to get more people involved in grassroots local democracy, urging councils themselves to come forward with successful practise.

Councillor Ken Browse, Chairman of NALC said: “People care about where they live. Whether it's facilities and activities for young people, the state of local parks or open spaces, support to local groups, protecting community assets like buildings or pubs, or events that bring people together.

“Whatever needs tackling or improving locally, becoming a parish or town councillor gives people the opportunity to change things.

“As one of 80,000 parish and town councillors myself, I’m lucky to be able to make such a huge difference to the quality of life for people in my area. But the great work councillors do often isn’t reported by the media, so it’s no surprise people aren’t queueing up to get involved.

“This needs to change and next year’s parish elections, just 300 days away, are a golden opportunity to encourage more people, especially younger people, to become councillors.”

The campaign is being backed by the new chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on local democracy, Wells MP Tessa Munt who said: “Getting involved in your community as a parish councillor is the purest form of local democracy and community politics there is. 

“I want to see more people getting involved in running our villages and towns, making decisions on improving their area and giving local people a voice. 

“Parish councillors are the hidden gems of our country’s democracy. I want to see their mandate to spend public money and use statutory powers improved through more use of the ballot box. This can only serve to strengthen their role.”

NALC has issued a ‘Call for ideas and practice’ to help drive their campaign in recognition of the need for new action, individually and collectively, at all levels and by a range of organisations, particularly by councils themselves.

Beech Hill Parish Council needs a clerk

Beech Hill Parish Council is looking for a Parish Clerk for 4 hours a week.  This small, active council meets on alternative months in the village.  The next meeting will be on Tuesday 16 September.  The Clerk would work from home and a laptop computer is supplied.  The salary is on the NALC/SLCC scales and depending on qualifications and experience.

For further information, please contact Janet Haines, Locum Clerk on 0118 978 8947 or clerk@beechhillvillage.co.uk

Revised LTN 65 Closed Churchyards and Disused Burial Grounds

 
Legal Topic Note 65 has been revised. The content has been checked and edited. 

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