West Midlands Regional Executive - and balancing budgets

4.00.00pm GMT Sat 27th Jan 2007

Earlier today we had the first West Midlands Liberal Democrat Executive of 2007. We have a couple of new members and some people that have changed position - for example Stuart Ritchie is the new Chair and I am the new Vice Chair.

The meeting went well, we split it into two session, the first Stuart chaired and the second I chaired. In the first session we elected the Chairs of the Campaigns Committee and the Local Party Committee (these are the only two not done at Conference), Mike Dixon remains Chair of the Campaigns Committee (and I sit on it) and I was elected Chair of the Local Parties Committee.

The Local Parties Committee deals with local parties that do not fulfil their PPERA (Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act) responsibilities and also deals with any complaints about local parties and individual members. The Local Parties Committee has been busy over the last few years, hopefully it will be quieter through 2007 (PPERA has had far more time to bed in now).

The rest of the first session dealt with reports from the committees and the officers. We also co-opted Linda Forbes to the Executive.

The second session looked at the budget, we overhaul our budget-setting procedures and I think set a budget that will serve us well in 2007. After looking at ways of increasing our incomes we looked a specific projects to fund and ten discussed every other expenditure line by line before setting the budget. We did set an unbalanced budget, we intend to spend more in 2007 than we expect to get it, it is only by £561 and I don't see that as a huge problem at the moment, but we will have to seep an eye on this throughout the year.

After the Regional Executive the Campaigns Committee met and discussed a number of items including the Moving Forward project and received a report from the Regional Campaigns Officer on the progress of the held and priority seats.