A day in the life...
Policy Consultant
No two days are the same at the LG Association. It can be like being a circus performer, having to keep lots of plates spinning at once, bringing a wide range of skills to deal with a variety of issues, and working with different types of people.
For me, the day starts early, I enjoy the quiet time before the buzz begins – valuable for catching up on emails, running through priorities and the plan for the day. By 9, the place is waking up with the usual offers of coffee and a quick chat before the real work begins.
Today I have a paper to write for one of the Government Department working groups that I sit on, so I get that out of the way while my head is still clear. At 10, I’m meeting a civil servant for an informal update on a Bill we’re both working on - it’s a relaxed and valuable chat. On the way back to my desk, I pop into the public affairs team to pass on what I’ve learned, and discuss how best to get our key lobbying points raised in the House of Commons debate.
I sit down to review a proposal for a piece of work that I’ve commissioned from an advisor, but before I’ve got very far, one of the Programme Directors tells me that a new Minister has requested a meeting with some of our leading members at the end of the week. Priorities are re-ordered and while the member services team check our politicians’ availability, I ring a couple of advisors and meet with a few other policy consultants. We agree on our key messages, how we are going to handle the briefing and who’ll go along with the members.
I accompany our Chief Executive to lunch with the Director of an environmental NGO that we work with. It’s a helpful way of getting an overview of their current priorities and identifying areas of common interest and potential joint working. I also take the opportunity to invite our guest to speak at a conference we’re planning - always a good way of getting a quick answer.
In the afternoon, there’s a meeting with colleagues from partner organisations. We discuss a joint piece of work we’re doing to support a stronger leadership role for councils in planning. We are each leading on a different strand of the work, and the meeting is a good opportunity to check progress, test ideas and provide some friendly challenge to the project.
Later on, I’m off to a monthly policy development meeting hosted by one of the Government Departments. It’s a popular policy, but proposals for implementation are causing some tension between local government representatives and other stakeholders. The meetings can be tricky to handle, so I meet with the representatives from local government to agree on the approach we want to take and our main goals for the meeting.
Our advance preparation and consensus approach pays off, and we all leave the meeting with the sense that we’ve made a real breakthrough.