Looking back to last May, there was much to celebrate in London’s election results. Winning back control of Kingston and Richmond was very welcome , as was retaining our control of Sutton. And then there were excellent results in Haringey – our group grew from 9 to 15 – and Merton leapt up from just a single Lib Dem councillor to 6!

Looking closely at the areas that make such great progress, we can see how beneficial it is to have full time staff – and volunteers – working on our campaigns over a long period. Their hard work and skills correlates with good results.

The other side of this particular coin is in 22 out of London’s 32 boroughs we don’t currently have any Lib Dem councillors, alongside 4 boroughs with less than a handful. In many boroughs we have keen and enthusiastic campaigners, but many people have full time jobs, family responsibilities and maybe long commutes. There may be little time in the evening to prepare for a weekend activity although actually quite amazing stuff does get done! But It’s clear that it’s very difficult to compete when our opponents have more in the way of resources than we do. We feel that if we make things a bit easier we can help those keen campaigners achieve more.

So, London Region have decided to set up a new support role which will be called the London Development Officer. To quote from the job ad, the purpose of the new role is “to drive growth in Liberal Democrat activity across London, with particular focus on groups with few or no elected councillors”. Our aim is that the new person will help ensure all local parties have an effective campaign plan. Part of that plan will be working out to make best use of volunteers’ time – and finding new ones! We expect to able to share example materials and templates. Spotting areas where training useful will also feature.

The closing date for applications is this Friday (22nd March) so if you or someone you know coulkd be the person to help drive growth in London, let’s hear from you.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social