The LRIP Member Development Programme is all about developing members’ skills and who better to learn from than each other.
So in this section a number of experienced councillors from across the Partnership give you the benefit of their time in office with a range of anecdotes and helpful advice on some key topics.
Their advice is in the form of video clips so we recommend you view the videos when using a broadband connection. For each topic, a text file is available to read if you can’t access the video clips.
Member officer relationship can be, sometime quite a tricky one because personalities obviously become involved in it.
You have to remember that your not the exert. One of the first things I did when I went on to one council was to say I didn’t want nothing to do with education, because I knew something about it. And In a sense you come therefore with preconceptions. And it’s sometime better to embark on something you don’t know about and learn.
The member office relationship is as good as you can make it. It’s entirely up to you to contact the officer and ask to go and see them., and 99.9% of the time they’ll say yes come along.
I think the best kind of working relationship you can have with an officer, is one where there is a mutual trust, and there is respect for each other’s different point of view and different relationship.
On the whole you generally find them very very open, very easy to get on with and they will give you real guidelines. When all said and done, member determine policy, officers are expected to execute that policy. So there’s a very clear demarcation if you like between the policy makers and management. I think so long as you don’t try to merge the two then you’ll get on fine.
Click on the links below to watch the videos: