Issue - meetings

Report of the Service Manager – Corporate Services

The Service Manager Corporate Services presented her report providing an update on Councillor Training.

The Service Manager Corporate Services explained that the report formed part of a twice yearly update to the Group and set out the current position of training completed by Members, including for the mandatory training sessions such as licencing and planning which had now been completed. She explained that due to the death of Her Majesty the Queen, Risk Management Training had been rearranged and that that, along with Code of Conduct and Treasury Management Training, were scheduled to take place shortly.

The Group was informed that Single Sign-On for e-learning had been trialled and following the successful demonstration with Members of the Group at the start of this meeting, it was planned to now roll this out to all Councillors. The Single Sign-On link could be found on the front page of the Members Intranet and Councillors simply needed to click on the link to take them directly to their e-learning account where all available training would be listed.

The Service Manager Corporate Services explained that the aim of the Single Sign-On was to make it easier for Councillors to access training and for it to act as a reminder of what had been completed and what was outstanding. The system would also send notification emails to Members to let them know of e-learning courses that they were due to complete, with a link taking them to their e-leaning account. She asked for Members to report any difficulties experienced and highlighted that the alternative to e-learning would be in-person training which had cost and time commitments. She said that the Council would circulate individual training records to all Members shortly.

The Chairman referred to anecdotal feedback from Councillors that they had previously had difficulty finding the training system and therefore thought that the Single Sign-On access, with the reminder system, would be a great help, particularly for training which required regular refreshment such as GDPR. The Chairman encouraged Members of the Group to feed this back to Councillor colleagues to hopefully lead to an increase in training completed.

In relation to brining in sanctions for uncompleted training, Members of the Group thought that this wouldn’t be necessary and suggested that it could be more for Chairs and Vice Chairs to encourage uptake for their relevant Committee members. The Group also hoped that the Single Sign-on in itself would help with completion rates.

Councillor J Wheeler suggested that Councillors not be allowed to sit on committees until they had completed the training required for that committee and highlighted the importance of mandatory training, such as GDPR for accessing emails, as potentially something that the Information Commissioner would look at if there were a data breach. He suggested that election candidates be pre-notified that completion of basic and mandatory training would be required of them if elected as a Councillor next year.

In relation to training completed elsewhere, including at the County Council and through employers and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 27