The sun was shining... time for a Regional Executive Committee meeting

Today has been one of the nicest days that we've had for a while now, so naturally Ros and I were off to Cambridge for a Regional Executive Committee meeting.

One thing that I've noticed about the East of England Region, as opposed to London, is that we don't know each other as well. Geographic considerations mean that we do more by teleconference, and we hold fewer meetings as an Executive Committee. That's good in terms of travel, but bad in that there is more to talk about when we do get together. Also, we don't have the familiarity with each other that you have when you see each other around a small Region like London. In London, I ran into my colleagues fairly regularly, I attended Local Party events across the city - East Dulwich to Orpington, or Havering was quite easy. In the East of England, I can't easily get to my neighbouring Local Parties in Suffolk, let alone South West Hertfordshire or Peterborough.

And knowledge is rather more thinly spread too. Most Local Parties in London know someone in a 'position of authority', and can find out what's happening relatively easily (I say relatively with caution), whereas in the East of England, knowing who is responsible for what is comparatively difficult. Here's an example...

At today's meeting, our Regional Training Coordinator lamented the fact that nobody tells her what training is being done across the Region, making it somewhat difficult for her to coordinate it. But who knows that she exists, what her role is? The County Coordinating Committees, who run training days, don't. Local Parties certainly don't. So, why do we have one? Because the English Party tells us we must. So we have a postholder existing almost in isolation from the area of Party activity she is supposed to be enabling.

Even the Regional Executive don't entirely understand what her role is, to the extent that last year I had to point out to them that, contrary to their belief, they weren't actually empowered to appoint one - the Regional Constitution gives that power to the Regional Development Committee. We're clearly going to have to work on that...

I was inspired to do something about it though. Watch this space...