Last Friday, James Gurling asked for party members’ views on the future of Spring Conference. These have to be submitted by Friday 29th November, so this is a reminder to make sure you have your say before then. Janes’  article is reproduced in full below:

As part of the budget setting process, earlier this year, the Federal Executive were asked to look at how the Party runs its Spring Conference and the costs it incurs. With pressures on Party finances as they are, the challenge was therefore to look at how to make spring conference, at worst, a ‘break-even’ event.

From the start, FE recognised that answering this challenge involved potentially significant changes to Spring Conference, and produced a paper which looks at three broad options – continuing as we do with a two day spring conference (and seeking to make cost savings accordingly), reducing the length of spring conference (and experiencing cost savings proportionately), or abolishing spring conference entirely. Of the three broad options, and being mindful of the need to maintain opportunities for accountability as well as policy development, the FE expressed a preference for solutions based on the second option.

At Conference in Glasgow we ran a consultation session on the paper, but we are keen to hear from people who aren’t necessarily able to attend conference at the moment, or from members who may have thoughts on how we could produce a more financially neutral Spring Conference.

We are asking for feedback from all Party Members. You can find our paper here, which gives you some background on our discussions – and you can e-mail your thoughts or questions to us [email protected].

The deadline for submissions is Friday 29th November.

You may also be interested in an article written by Toby Keynes on the timing of Spring Conference last week and the discussion thread that followed.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings