East Ayrshire Council expected to see a high proportion of newly elected members following the Local Government election held in May 2022. For officers, it was important to support newly elected members into the council so they could begin to get up to speed and fulfil their varied roles and responsibilities effectively. Officers had excellent working relationships with elected members and a successful induction was a high priority.
Officers benefitted from support provided by the Improvement Service (IS) to prepare for elected member induction. Officers from East Ayrshire Council attended three national events hosted by the Improvement Service (IS), aimed at supporting officers from different councils to share ideas, knowledge and learning with each other. The events also provided an opportunity for officers to hear from various national speakers, including Scottish Parliament colleagues who presented on how they induct newly elected MSPs.
These events helped the council consider how to create a great induction for members and the importance of facilitating the building of relationships during induction. The council took on board several suggestions, including tapping into the experience of current members to act as critical friends for the development of induction support.
The council also benefitted from the national induction notebooks developed by the IS. The content from the notebooks was used by the council to develop seven e-learning welcome and induction modules for elected members. The e-learning was well received with high levels of completion amongst newly elected members. Being able to use the base content the IS developed for those e-learning modules saved a lot of time for officers and let them focus on spending that time on other areas of the induction preparations.
The elections saw a fifty per cent turnover in members in the council and these new members were supported through their induction. The support provided by the IS was really helpful to officers and contributed to a successful induction.
The IS Elected Member Induction Notebooks are available to download on this site.
For more information on our support for elected members, visit our Elected Members Development pages or contact David Barr.