The Preliminary Agenda for the federal conference in Bournemouth in September is now available on the party website.

All the policy and business motions included, including those accompanying the two policy papers (on security policy and on transport), are open to amendment; the deadline is 12 noon on Wednesday 9 July.

This is also the deadline for topical motions, which must be either on events happening after the 21 May deadline for motions, or related to any of the following topics: child care; crime and policing; health; housing; work and pensions.

I hope you’ll submit plenty of amendments and topical motions, and enable your Conference Committee to construct a stimulating agenda.

Finally, as you may know, this year sees a major change to the conference timing. In place of the Sunday-Thursday schedule we’ve used for the last fifteen years or so, the conference will move forward by a day. The Saturday (13^th September) will be a full conference day, starting with consultative sessions in the morning; sessions in the hall will start after lunch. We expect that conference-goers, particularly those with some distance to travel, will start gathering on the Friday evening.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will all be full conference days (we may use part of one day for further consultative sessions), and the conference will finish with the leader’s speech on Wednesday lunchtime (we had originally planned to finish mid-afternoon, but problems with television coverage have moved us forward; we’ll try the later finish next year).

These changes have been introduced following extensive consultation with party members last year. By constructing a much fuller conference weekend, we aim to offer more of conference to party members who cannot attend during the week, and conference participants will be home in good time to take part in any local by-elections there may be on the Thursday.

A new registration structure is also being introduced to reflect this change, enabling party members to register for the weekend, for the Monday-Wednesday, or for the whole conference. A registration form is available on the party website; you can also register online there.

See you in Bournemouth!

Duncan Brack is Chair of the Federal Conference Committee.