I have been negligent in my responsibilities as an allotmenteer. Over the past 3 months my plot has gone untended and become overgrown. So I went up to the allotment at the weekend to decide on 'what is to be done'  I took a few pictures like this one, which is a plaque someone once gave me - of a former editor of Gardeners World Magazine - whose last resting place is now on my allotment shed door.

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Anyway, I have decided to invest a sensible amount of time during the winter in clearing the paths around the raised beds and getting the soil ready for spring planting.

If you have ever thought about getting an allotment, now is the best time of year to do it. By starting now you can clear the ground and all the weeds have time to rot down before you start planting in the spring. If you leave it till spring to start (like most well meaning beginners) there will get very little benefit in your first year, except all the exercise put in to busting a gut to clear the land in double quick time and then giving up because it seemed like too much hard work.

I’m off to ‘do some radio’ at half eleven. Arrow FM   (which is local radion but does not do stories about cats stuck up trees) is doing a piece on the voluntary sector grants decisions, I need to explain why we make voluntary sector grants and what we want in exchange for them.

ffice:smarttags" />Neil Stewart Associates are now able to offer forward looking public sector managers a 2 day course on Leadership and Change Management for only £1169.13  I'm tempted to email them and ask if they do discount for block bookings (just for a laugh)

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http://www.neilstewartassociates.com/sa195/

Its not the biggest of issues but in London Road, St Leonards we have persistent litter merchants, machines run by big banks, which go about the business of exchanging cash for plastic 24 hours a day. Probably not worthy of an ASBO but still a continuing contribution to the waste on the streets. Of course 10 miles up the road in picturesque ffice:smarttags" />Battle or Rye, traders would be up in arms if this were allowed to continue, so I figure the same standard sould also apply to Central St Leonards.

One of the folk presenting at this event did a turn concerning New Times Organisations, which were held to be a radical departure from hierarchical companies we had all all come to know and love.

The bloke worked  for an organisation called Demos and while he as gone on to higher things it looks like, following a 15 year gap, Demos have had another bash at the same subject. This time its by Paul Miller and Paul Skidmoore called Disorganisation – Why future organisations must ‘loosen up’. Its a good read if you are into the heavy stuff about organisations (and they saved the best bits until last too - Chapter 4). I was also quite amazed that we now live in the kind of world where you can get private companies to pay for this sort of stuff too, thus proving that the future is more Orange than red?

I’m attending a meeting of the County-wide Lead Member for Planning Network on the 13^th December. I’m not actually a ‘lead member on planning’ but I do know we badly need some more houses in the South-East.

This meeting means travelling to deepest Crowborough, where I shall probably be the token 'urban' person arguing for economic growth and homes for key workers, while the country cousins mumble things like ‘git orf my land’ into their council coffee an biscuits.

Mind you, in the rural areas outside Hastings, they can’t hire teachers, fire fighters, nurses and police officers either, but when it comes to providing the practical things (like somewhere to live) for the people who they want to fill jobs in the South East, they just become possessed by the spirit of the Daily Mail, defending every tree and cow and field, rather than building what everyone, except the well-housed and heeled, seem to need - (end of rant)

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One of the priorities for the council is the subject of Overview and Scrutiny, where the Commission had some ‘frank and helpful’ comments to make.

fficeffice" /> For my part, I have been forking over the Audit Commission website (hope you appreciate the gardening metaphor there) and dug up a really handy link to identify Commission comments by subject in CPA reports. After that, all you do is bash in the word ‘scrutiny’ and Bob’s your uncle.

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Of course we also don’t want to get into the position where we are just playing ‘catch-up’ with CPA, so just as important is how the framework for the next round of inspections is shaping up and what skills councillors will need to possess to meet future expectations of local government.

Back in 2003 the Office of the Deputy PM did some research into capacity building needs for local councils

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and this is of some use in working out what it takes to be a councillor. Further research was carried out by the LGA, who looked at the more specific question of urban political leadership skills

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At almost the same time a team led by Professor Jo Silvester from Goldsmith has assembled a complete ‘skills set’ for the Improvement and Development Agency

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Interestingly Professor Silvester has also recently conducted work on competency-based assessments to help the Conservative Party in evaluating parliamentary candidates

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This nice slant in the piece of work conducted for the IDeA, was that Jo Silvester concluded the job of a Councillor was probably more complicated than that of a member of parliament (a view I can support, since in my experience most MPs seem to have a degree of influence, while councillors actually have budgets and the responsibility of power to consider).

All of this work makes a useful starting point from which to assess the development needs of elected individuals who are charged with running increasingly complex local councils.