Agenda item

Report of the Town Clerk.

A report of the Town Clerk was considered by the Sub-Committee, which sought endorsement for sessions planned for Quarter 1 and provided a forward look at Quarter 2 of the Member Learning and Development rolling programme.

The Sub-Committee were disappointed with the low level of interest and poor attendance at sessions which had led to cancellation or deferment.  The Chair discussed the provision of City-specific sessions, which had appeared to have no impact on attendance figures. The Town Clerk had thought creatively to improve attendance, sessions had been offered in various formats, hybrid, face-to-face etc; a variation of timings and days of the week had be trialled. Members suggested sending calendar invitations (as opposed to email alerts which tended to get lost in inboxes). The date would then be saved in Members’ Outlook calendars. The Sub-Committee was in agreement that future sessions should be time limited to one hour unless the subject required longer. The competition for Members’ time had been a contributing factor in attracting participation, and so this was considered a good idea for  making the offerings a more attractive prospect. Recording sessions had not been successful in capturing post session viewers, which had been introduced in recognition of Members  time constraints.  A Member suggested enabling Microsoft Word prompts or search tools in recording transcript, to ‘bookmark’ recordings which would reduce the requirement to view the entire video. 

The Town Clerk provided an update on the portal and confirmed that since the last meeting of the Sub-Committee, working with several Members, including the Chair of the Digital Services Committee, useful suggestions had been made to refresh the look, feel and content of the page. A demonstration of this work would be provided to Members at the next meeting of the Sub-Committee.

Members endorsed the information technology focused sessions planned for Quarter 1 and the scoping of Quarter 2 offerings which would deliver City Corporation specific roles within the Court and supporting Members as community leaders.

RESOLVED:- That Members:

Note the report and considered and endorsed the content and direction proposed in respect of future offerings outlined in Quarter 1 (April to June 2024) and the potential offerings for Quarter 2 (July to September 2024).