The BTEC Professional Award in Local Governance has been developed by Bristol City Council and is administered by Edexcel, the UK’s largest awarding body offering academic and vocational qualifications. The Award is designed to equip Councillors with a full range of effective community leadership and partnership skills, enabling them to represent their communities within a wider governance context. It is the first nationally available qualification for Councillors.The course is an 80 hour commitment, spread across a range of modules. The cost is 1000 pounds.

Read more on PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATION FOR COUNCIL MEMBERS…

Community and voluntary groups working in partnership with local authorities are to share three million pounds for projects to tackle homelessness among ethnic minority groups. The money is going to councils and other bodies that were successful in bids to the Ethnic Minorities Innovation Fund.The money will help support the delivery of innovative projects that aim to cut levels of homelessness. The successful projects range from helping victims of domestic violence to supporting 11 to 25 year olds to gain the sort of life skills that will help them to avoid homelessness in the future.

Read more on CASH TO HELP HOMELESS IN ETHNIC MINORITY GROUPS…

Councils are being urged to make use of a new tool that could help improve people’s health by giving them better access to healthy food. The system has been developed by one local authority and put through trials by a second and is being launched at the Trading Standards Institute’s annual conference.The ‘food access radar’ toolkit was developed by Staffordshire County Council working in partnership with the National Consumer Council and with the support of the Food Standards Agency. The idea is to use information that local councils already have to identify any areas where people have difficulty in getting hold of affordable and healthy food. It has now completed a period of successful trials with Trading Standards staff at Oxfordshire County Council, which was also involved in the initiative to develop and test a tool that could be used by a range of authorities to identify quickly and easily any communities where people’s health could be at risk because of poor access to healthy food.

Read more on NEW TOOLKIT FOR COUNCILS HELPS COMMUNITIES ACCESS HEALTHY FOOD…