Parliamentary Seminar Series: Putting the ? back into scrutiny

As part of the Centre for Public Scrutiny’s goal to share knowledge between scrutineers at all tiers of government, we will be holding our annual series of parliamentary seminars on the following dates:

CONFIRMED DATES
Wednesday 19 November 2008 - CANCELLED
Wednesday 17 December 2008
Wednesday 14 January 2009
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Wednesday 1 April 2009 - NEW DATE

Theme:
These seminars will give local authority scrutineers the opportunity to learn about parliamentary scrutiny and discuss the effectiveness of the function with peers from other councils and parliamentary committees.

In order to encourage focussed and practical learning, we will be running the session, ‘Putting the ? back into scrutiny - New skills and techniques for effective questioning’, which will run as an afternoon session on these days.

Who should attend:
Elected members - Chairs and Vice-chairs*.

*Please note: as the CfPS’ afternoon session is focussed on questioning skills it may be more useful for members rather than officers. Due to popularity for places CfPS can only allocate one place per authority for the series.

Timings:
The seminars will run from 11.00am to 15.00.  Please find attached a sample programme of how the day will run.
Sample programme

Booking:
These seminars are free of charge** and places will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis (prioritising authorities which were not able to attend the previous series). A maximum of one place is available to each authority. 

**Although the series are free CfPS will charge a £50 fee to any delegate that does not show up to an event they are registered to attend.

To register, please complete the attached form and return to Fateha Begum at . You will receive notification of whether you have been allocated a place in due course.
PSS_BOOKING_FORM_2008-9.doc