Practitioners’ Conference 2024 Agenda
To find out more about each session, click on the information icon on the right.
Wednesday 31 January
All sessions apply to England & Wales unless specified otherwise.
Time | Session |
---|---|
09:00 – 10:00 | Registration & Refreshments – Meet the Exhibitors |
09:15 – 9:45 | Meeting of First Time Delegates |
10:00 – 10:20 | Welcome to the Practitioners’ Conference |
10:20 – 11:15
| Understanding Generation Z – How to Recruit, Retain and Motivate the Best of the Youngest Generation in the Workplace Gen Z (years of birth 1995-2009) is the most significant generational shift so far. They are different to what has come before, and for good reason. The challenges they have inherited are incredibly difficult, but they are also well placed to overcome them. In order to recruit, retain and motivate the best leaders and organisations need to learn and adapt, and quickly. Former secondary school headteacher and Gen Z expert Alex Atherton will identify their key characteristics, and the actions which leaders and organisations can take not only to survive but ensure future prosperity. Understanding Generation Z – How to Recruit, Retain and Motivate the Best of the Youngest Generation in the Workplace |
11:20 – 11:50 | Devolution in the Dock! In a time of ‘Levelling-Up” through ‘Devo-Deals’, ‘Double Devolution’ ‘Community Rights to Bid/Acquire’ and ‘Community Ownership Funds’ it can seem like the whole world has been struck with devolution madness. But is devolution really a panacea for all ills in our local communities? Should we be seeking more and more devolution for devolution’s sake? Devolution in the Dock! |
11:50 – 12:10 | Refreshments |
12:10 – 13:00 | Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 1) Storm Babet leads to Red Alerts from the Met Office. Storm Ciaran will lead to heavy rain and storm force 10 winds. Thank goodness for 26 letters in the alphabet. September 2023 was the hottest on record. The evidence is compelling that climate change is wreaking havoc. It is not enough to stick up the flood defences and hope the problems will go away. We have targets to meet. The law says we need to be Net Zero by 2050. Does that mean we should not panic and just carry on as we are? After all that is around a generation away?! There are some who say we cannot afford to make the changes now, so we might as well wait 10 years before we do anything. In fact, many councils have declared an emergency, and most are working to a date of 2030 to get sort things out. That is only six years away! We will show how practical actions being taken now by parish clerks and councillors are already having an effect. We will show in this session how parish clerks, being at the heart of our communities, can put together plans, work out priorities and establish projects to make net zero a reality by 2030. We will show how to engage your communities. More importantly we will demonstrate how this will make ALL people better off with cheaper energy, lower travel costs, and better health. Parish Clerks are and can make a real difference. Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 1) |
12:10 – 13:00 | Community Energy in your Parish This session shows how parish communities, leadership and assets can create locally owned energy projects that support residents to save energy and put profits back into the community. Community Energy South support building capacity and capability in local places so local energy can be generated in the way local people want. For example: solar farms only given local endorsement on the condition of local part-ownership, community benefit funds or future selling directly to local people; hydro schemes that power local buildings; EV charging at village halls or simplified energy advice projects run by locals to help friends and neighbours to make their homes more cosy & comfortable. We also deliver climate literacy training to enable parish councillors to understand climate change and where your parish and the people who live there may be able to take most effective action. Community Energy in your Parish |
12:10 – 13:00 | Empowering Local Government: Bridging the Digital Skills Gap and Enhancing Productivity through Innovative Technologies Join David Hall, CloudyIT Managing Director, and Steve Walker, Head of Local Gov Services, as they show you how you can transform your council operations with modern working and unlock the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), through Microsoft Copilot. Also, join CloudyIT and partners in our Experience & Innovation Suite, letting you try the latest tech to improve your council’s IT and other key areas like community services and sustainability. Experts from Microsoft, Owl Labs, and Decisions will be available to show off new solutions and offer advice. For more info and to book your space, visit Experience & Innovation at the SLCC Practitioner’s Conference 2024. Empowering Local Government: Bridging the Digital Skills Gap and Enhancing Productivity through Innovative Technologies |
13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch |
14:00 – 15:00 | Retaining Volunteers in the 21st Century Volunteering is changing and old models of how to keep people engaged are becoming outdated. We will explore some of these changes, examine the problem with traditional retention approaches and provide top tips for how you can change and become better at keeping volunteer support. Retaining Volunteers in the 21st Century |
14:00 – 15:00 | Environmental Action Planning The recent Government guidance on the biodiversity duty for town and parish councils reminds us that we have a great opportunity to work with our community in so many ways that will make a real difference to present and future generations. This session will look at how we can deliver that difference from early steps that need few if any resources up to fuller combined action plans for our council area. Environmental Action Planning |
14:00 – 15:00 | Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 2) Storm Babet leads to Red Alerts from the Met Office. Storm Ciaran will lead to heavy rain and storm force 10 winds. Thank goodness for 26 letters in the alphabet. September 2023 was the hottest on record. The evidence is compelling that climate change is wreaking havoc. It is not enough to stick up the flood defences and hope the problems will go away. We have targets to meet. The law says we need to be Net Zero by 2050. Does that mean we should not panic and just carry on as we are? After all that is around a generation away?! There are some who say we cannot afford to make the changes now, so we might as well wait 10 years before we do anything. In fact, many councils have declared an emergency, and most are working to a date of 2030 to get sort things out. That is only six years away! We will show how practical actions being taken now by parish clerks and councillors are already having an effect. We will show in this session how parish clerks, being at the heart of our communities, can put together plans, work out priorities and establish projects to make net zero a reality by 2030. We will show how to engage your communities. More importantly we will demonstrate how this will make ALL people better off with cheaper energy, lower travel costs, and better health. Parish Clerks are and can make a real difference. Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 2) |
15:00 – 15:30 | Refreshments |
15:30 – 16:30 | Retaining Volunteers in the 21st Century Volunteering is changing and old models of how to keep people engaged are becoming outdated. We will explore some of these changes, examine the problem with traditional retention approaches and provide top tips for how you can change and become better at keeping volunteer support. Retaining Volunteers in the 21st Century |
15:30 – 16:30 | Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained – How to Make a Compelling Business Case Developing a business case is an important step in the process of seeking funding for any ‘business’, project or venture managed by the council. A well-structured business case will demonstrate the project’s viability and potential success. It will also help you to clarify what you want to do and how you want to do it. A well-structured business case can demonstrate to funders that your project has a strong foundation, a clear path to success, and the potential to deliver benefits. This can help increase your chances of securing funding and support for your council. Whatever the scale, there are some basic stages to developing business cases that can help you access funding: Define your business idea and goals, Conduct market research, Develop a financial model, & Present a clear and compelling argument. This session will explore these stages. Look at a basic template to present any business case, how to scale that with your project and how to manage expectations of what can be done and what will be done. Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained – How to Make a Compelling Business Case |
15:30 – 16:30 | Exciting Session Coming Soon! |
16:35 – 17:30 | Incident Planning – Are You Ready to Respond? Parish & Town Councils organise many events but are the plans in place to cope with an incident? Helen Ball (Town Clerk – Shrewsbury Town Council) shares her personal experiences of managing incidents and how it has changed her views of having the right Emergency Plans and replicates the Emergency Desktop Exercise she undertakes in her town to gauge preparedness. Incident Planning – Are You Ready to Respond? |
19:00 | Drinks Reception |
19:30 | Networking Dinner |
Thursday 1 February 2024
All sessions apply to England & Wales unless specified otherwise
Time | Session |
---|---|
08:00 – 08:40 | Registration For New Delegates & Refreshments |
08:40 – 9:40 | Exciting Session Coming Soon! |
09:45 – 10:45 | How to Use chatGPT. Use AI to do Council Tasks Faster You might have heard about chatGPT and thought it sounds scary and isn’t for you. The truth is this new technology is here to stay and can be a very useful tool. The chatbot AI can do a surprising amount of tasks, and Becky Walsh has been exploring what it can do for the kinds of tasks we do as councils. Don’t worry, it’s not about take away your job, but it could make your working day a whole lot easier. In this talk, you’ll learn how to use it and what it can be used for. How to Use chatGPT. Use AI to do Council Tasks Faster |
09:45 – 10:45 | Clear As Mud? All Things Procurement Cranbrook Town Council in East Devon serves a new town which started being built in 2011 on land which used to be green fields. Since its creation in 2015, the Town Council has been delivering many public procurement exercises in-house and delivered or is delivering new assets, including a sports pavilion, a skatepark, two multi-use games areas, an outdoor gym, a trim trail, seven new play areas, CCTV installations and all the associated contracts, including a grounds maintenance contract worth £200,000 per annum. Come and learn from Cranbrook’s experience – and hopefully pick up a few hints and tips along the way to implement in your council. Clear As Mud? All Things Procurement |
10:45 – 11:30 | Refreshments |
11:30 – 12:30 | Effective Investigation of Disciplinary & Grievance Workforce Issues Effective investigation is critical to handling of potential Disciplinary & Grievance matters involving employees when they arise. This session will cover key techniques and pitfalls as well as confidence builders when asked to investigate a staffing issue. Where there might be aggrievement between two or more employees or a member of staff is facing disciplinary getting things right is critical. This session will help with that. Effective Investigation of Disciplinary & Grievance Workforce Issues |
11:30 – 12:30 | Employment: From Pay Rates to Holiday Entitlement This session will centre on all things related to employment, such as pay rates, how to evaluate the job, holiday entitlement and the NJC Green Book terms and conditions of service. Employment: From Pay Rates to Holiday Entitlement |
11:30 – 12:30 | Women Only – Avoid burnout and develop a powerful mindset Don’t those ’empowering women’ talks get your goat! And they should, because being told you’re ‘not good enough’ is hardly going to inspire you. In this talk, Becky Walsh will explore what drives us to work beyond our energy, feel blocked even when we are being epic, and feel like somewhere there is an ‘unfulfilled life’ we should have. In Becky’s unique comedy style, she will give you tools to reprogramme your neuropathways from any stuck negative perceptions of yourself. That’s after she’s been ranting about how they got there in the first place. Sorry chaps, this is a women-only room, you wouldn’t want to be in here and none of this was your fault (directly)! Women Only – Avoid burnout and develop a powerful mindset |
11:30 – 12:30 | Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 2) Storm Babet leads to Red Alerts from the Met Office. Storm Ciaran will lead to heavy rain and storm force 10 winds. Thank goodness for 26 letters in the alphabet. September 2023 was the hottest on record. The evidence is compelling that climate change is wreaking havoc. It is not enough to stick up the flood defences and hope the problems will go away. We have targets to meet. The law says we need to be Net Zero by 2050. Does that mean we should not panic and just carry on as we are? After all that is around a generation away?! There are some who say we cannot afford to make the changes now, so we might as well wait 10 years before we do anything. In fact, many councils have declared an emergency, and most are working to a date of 2030 to get sort things out. That is only six years away! We will show how practical actions being taken now by parish clerks and councillors are already having an effect. We will show in this session how parish clerks, being at the heart of our communities, can put together plans, work out priorities and establish projects to make net zero a reality by 2030. We will show how to engage your communities. More importantly we will demonstrate how this will make ALL people better off with cheaper energy, lower travel costs, and better health. Parish Clerks are and can make a real difference. Parish Clerks Can Deliver Our Targets on Climate Change (Part 2) |
12:30 – 13:25 | Lunch |
13:25 – 14:25 | Stop Knife Crime – Together We Can Make a Difference – Educating Young People, Engaging Parents, and Advocating for Change Knife crime is one of this country’s most pressing problems, and it is constantly evolving. It is a complex problem influenced by a variety of factors. Over the last decade, it has spread from the big cities and is now a growing problem in towns and villages across the UK. Knife crime is indiscriminate, it can happen to anyone, regardless of their age, gender, or background.
Stop Knife Crime – Together We Can Make a Difference – Educating Young People, Engaging Parents, and Advocating for Change |
14:25 – 15:25 | The Clerks’ Repair Shop Do you have something broken or in poor repair? A funding issue; policy challenge; legal conundrum; relationship breakdown or a personal crisis? Could you do with a hand to get something fixed? Then bring it to our workbench. In this interactive session a panel of professionals including Clerks, Lawyers, Life Coaches and members of SLCC Advice Service will bring their skills, knowledge and experiences to bear on real-life problems brought by you. We’ll try to repair, renovate and restore! (please keep an eye out for SLCC bulletins and forum posts seeking submissions for the Clerks’ Repair Shop) The Clerks’ Repair Shop |
15:25 | End of Conference |
Practitioners’ Conference 2024 is generously sponsored by CloudyIT.
For expert advice visit www.cloudyit.co.uk/councils

Please note: If you have booked to attend this conference, you will be required to register for each session before the event begins.
Disclaimer: Whilst SLCC try to ensure all speakers present accurate and reliable information, SLCC do not endorse, approve or certify such information, nor does it guarantee the accuracy, completeness, efficacy, timeliness, or correct sequencing of such information. All presentations represent the opinions of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the position or the opinion of SLCC or its members. Reference by the speaker to any specific commercial product, process or service by trade name, trademark, service mark, manufacturer, and corporation or otherwise does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favouring by SLCC.