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Bournemouth Borough Council's Elected Members seek to serve the communities they represent and the Borough as a whole, to the very best of their ability.

To do this, the Council has made a committment to ensuring its Members are supported in continuously developing the range of skills needed to be outstanding community leaders. In support of this, the Council has signed up to achieving Member Development Charter status.

The Council is working towards these key aims with help from the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA). In 2000 the IDeA launched a Charter for Member Development.

The purpose of the Charter is to:

• raise the profile of member development and training
• encourage local authorities to provide development and training for their elected members
• award authorities for best practice in member training and development initiatives

Visit the IDeA's website

So, how will this happen in Bournemouth?

With expectations of their performance and contribution to the management of the Council ever increasing, a robust Member Development Stategy has been formulated to support Members in achieving the skills needed to meet the broad range of responsibilities that come with being a community leader.

The aims of the strategy are to:

• create a clear Member Development Framework, based upon individual needs and the needs of the Council as a whole
• ensure all Members have the skills and knowledge necessary to lead the delivery of high quality public services through the Community Leadership way of working
• ensure all Members are fully aware of their responsibilities, accountabilities, legal requirements and matters of probity
• support continuous learning and skill-building, through Personal Development Planning

These key aims have helped to inform an Action Plan for achieving effective Member development and Charter Status. The action plan helps drive the work being undertaken by the Council, by identifying key milestones and goals. The plan is fully supported by the Member Development Steering Group, which is a Council body that regulary meets to discuss member development issues and ensure the project remains focussed and on-track.

A range of methods, locations and times are employed in delivering training, to take account of personal circumstances, backgrounds and learning styles. A mixture of in-house workshops, external courses and events all help to give a balanced approach and maintain flexibility. To view a copy of the latest phase of the Elected Member training and development programme, click here.

In addition to this latest raft of training courses, all elected and co-opted Members have access to Modern Councillor. Modern Councillor is a flexible e-learning tool which has been created by Learning Pool to provide all Members, from the very new to the highly experienced, with a range of courses reflecting the challenges and latest initiatives facing all elected and co-opted Members.

To guide Members and give an overview of the requirements of various functions, Role Descriptions are available. A Toolkit, outlining how Members can best identify their development needs and balance this against what the Council requires of them in their role, has also been delivered to all Members for use as an ongoing learning and development aid.

To view Role Descriptions for the following functions, please click on the links below:

Community Councillor

Cabinet Member

Scrutiny Panel Chair

Statutory Board Member

Co-opted Member

As Members develop and grow in confidence the Council and the communities they represent can be sure that each one is an effective leader, using their knowledge of how the Council operates to contribute to its performance, either as a member of the Cabinet, Overview and Scrutiny panels or other statutory committees.