Practitioners’ Conference 2020

Kat Horner works for Alzheimer’s Society as Dementia Friendly Communities Officer covering the West Midlands region. Kat has been in the role for 5 years, working with local communities, organisations and individuals affected by dementia. Prior to this Kat has worked for Age UK and the Royal Voluntary Service delivering community based services that support older people to continue to live active and independent lives.

Do you shy away from tricky talks? Do you wish there was an easy way to solve the problems you have with other people?

Jane Biscombe FSLCC, Clerk to Weymouth Town Council explains how to have the crucial conversations.

Jane joined local government as a youth worker in 1991, 10 years later she moved to Hampshire County Council and was then offered the “enlightening” role of Crisis Project Manager and was parachuted into Council Services to deal with problems as diverse as legal process reengineering, religious education communications, complaints, highways planning and housing allocations.

Jane worked for Surrey County Council and Woking Borough Council before the call to be a clerk became too strong to resist in 2015 and Jane moved to Yateley Town Council. A chance email about the new Town Council being set up in Weymouth in 2018 led Jane to where she is now.

Many local council websites are managed by people with little or no training in web standards or accessibility. It is hardly surprising that many councils struggle to meet the minimum legal requirements for accessibility since they are often ‘hostage to fortune’ based on historical design and template choices or suffering from legacy contracts with third party providers where no accessibility standards were specified.

Take a critical look at your own accessibility statement (another legal obligation alongside an accessible website) and accurately gauge how robust it is in terms of meeting technical requirements and supporting disabled users.

Alistair McNaught is a member of the Digital Accessibility Working Group, liaising with Government Digital Services to support the implementation of the legislation in Further and Higher Education.

Steve Postlethwaite, Clerk to Fawley Parish Council, will use his 15 years practical knowledge and experience as a Home Office trained Crime Prevention Officer to guide you through your legal requirements as Town & Parish Councils.

Learn the simple tools to apply crime prevention and community safety principles to your council’s risk assessments and decision making processes.