The LGA Lib Dem office is holding a session on budget setting on 7 January aimed at finance portfolio holders or those responsible for setting opposition budgets.

Gerald Vernon-Jackson (Leader of Portsmouth City Council and a national IDeA peer) and Derek Osbourne (Leader of the London Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames and an IDeA board member) will provide advice on the detailed goals and parameters required for a budget that will withstand the intense scrutiny of press, opposition groups and others.

The session will be held at Local Government House but there will be webcasting and teleconferencing facilities for those participating remotely. A registration fee of £25  will be charged for those attending in person; for more info contact Jake Beavan at jake.beavan@lga.gov.uk or on 020 7664 3293.

Thank you to everyone who came along to Kickstart and made it such a huge success.  This is the biggest Kickstart event we've ever done and there was a real buzz about the whole weekend, and we have high hopes now of many of the council groups who attended having excellent results in the coming years.

If you want to find out more about what you missed, then Alex Foster has written an excellent article on Liberal Democrat Voice about the weekend and gives a sense of what happened.  Our favourite quotes include:

"During the weekend, several of them told me that they had been dreading the weekend as a completely new and scary experience, but by the end of the three days, all of us were, without exception, impressed by the training we’d received and how welcome we’d all been made to feel."

and

"ALDC’s tracking data shows that ALDC members are much more likely to win elections than non-members – and that Kickstart attendees still more likely than that. My team is already considering who we’ll send to next year’s event, and there is no question in our mind we got value for our money."

An date for your new Diary!

The 2010 Local Government Conference will take place on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 June 2010 in London. 

Nick Clegg addressing the 2009 Local Government Conference in Sheffield. 

Friday will be satellite events during the day, and the Liberal Democrat Local Government Dinner in the evening. 

Saturday will be a one day conference featuring speeches, debate, training, discussion and exhibition. 

The Local Government Conference is jointly organised by ALDC and the LGA Liberal Democrat Group. Our previous conferences in Birmingham and Sheffield have been a great chance for Lib Dem Councillors and local campaigners to get together. 

Registration will be online straight away in the new year. 

If you're interested in organising a fringe event, a satellite event, training or being part of our exhibition please get in touch with Emma Hall or Tim Pickstone at ALDC. 

Please note that ALDC's Weekend Kickstart event 27-29 November 2009 is FULL.

The weekend event, the main training event in the year for Lib Dem volunteer campaigners has been heavily oversubscribed this year, and as a result we are unable to take any further bookings.

It is brilliant that so many people are keen to get involved and kickstart their campaign. More information emma.hall@aldc.org

Reclaiming the Green Agenda" was ALDC's most popular fringe at last week's Bournemouth Federal Conference.

Speakers included: 
- Simon Hughes MP
- Tony Bosworth (Friends of the Earth)
- Cllr Louise Bloom (Eastleigh BC)
- Cllr Alexis Rowell (LB Camden)
with Cllr Andrew Dakers (LB Hounslow) in the Chair.

We've recorded the fringe as a "podcast". A few different options for listening. There are a variety of ways of listening or downloading the episode at our "podbean" page - click here. 

Let us know about any technical issues, as we've not tried this before!.