Concentrating on regional LP

In my new role as Deputy Chair of the North West Regional Labour Party I have begun a series of regular meetings with and visits to the Regional Director at the office in Warrington.
This week, on the 10th anniversary of my starting work in that same office myself, we talked about how the lay members that make up the Board can take a proactive role in terms of training and constitutional work. (The board is made up of constituency delegates from the counties, TU delegates, representatives from the PLP and the EPLP and delegates from the Co-op and Socialist Societies).

In terms of training, my idea basically is to train key LP members to carry out campaign training (training the trainers if you like) and then create a register of trainers so that next time we get a request from a Labour Party branch for campaign training, we can send someone fairly local to them to deliver it, thus saving the party money in travelling time and expense, but also giving development opportunities to our members.

And in a similar vein, I want to train a group of key LP members in managing constitutional work, so that they can handle appeals and disputes and take on some more of the interviewing for panels for local, national and European government.

So I have come away with a list of tasks that involve asking the Unions if they have any Training the Trainers projects they can run for me, and getting rooms booked and organising videos and all sorts of other stuff. Tim Moore - expect a phone call on this

Also we have agreed as a board to meet around the region in future and combine our visits with campaigning so I now need to get the constituency county delegates to organise venues, target wards and campaign activities for those weekends we are due.

All good stuff!