A warm welcome to the latest edition of the cca.weekly. It really is an honour to be chosen as your new Chairman to represent the almost 7500 Conservative Councillors across the Country, a sentiment shared by the whole of your new CCA Board. We commit to ensuring that the powerful voice of Conservative Local Government is truly heard, alongside pledging that we will provide as much support as we can to colleagues across all of our Councils.
Firstly, it was great to see a packed (and oversubscribed) turnout to the recent CCA Conference. We were pleased to welcome a smorgasbord of talent from Government to our many presentations and workshops – with some very productive discussions and results. In particular, we were grateful for our Secretary of State Michael Gove for devoting a huge chunk of his day to working with us, and we even had a message from the Prime Minister.
It’s also been remarkable to see the incredible work from our Conservative Councillors in assisting in so many ways to help our friends in Ukraine – setting the example for both compassion and action. We are currently collating all of the work underway, so please send through your efforts to [email protected]. You will note in the previous ccaweekly we provided an example motion that Councillors may wish to use as a blueprint to champion all they are doing to help the cause. Please continue to send through other example motions you are putting forward so we can share with the Conservative family. They are a great way to gain traction if you are in opposition, or to get our opponents on the back foot and champion our achievements when running a Council. However, a reminder to follow correct processes if you are submitting a motion – you must always get approval from your Group or Leader first.
You can expect a flurry of activity from your new CCA Board over the coming months. We are working to with the Conservative Research Department to ensure many more Conservative Local Government-focussed briefings will be issued. We will be doing more surveys to canvass your views to feed back directly to the Party and Government Ministers. And we are looking closely at how we can use the war chest we have built up as a CCA to help those colleagues on the ground both winning seats and defending them.
Finally, we are absolutely committed to using our role at the top table of the Party to promote the solutions that Conservative Councillors have. And to do that, we’ll need your views, ideas and feedback. Now really is the time for the voice of Conservative Local Government to be heard loud and clear.