Councillors' remuneration, allowances and expenses: guidance

TRAINING

Training and Development

73. Each councillor should:

• Have a role description in a format determined by the council
• Have participated in a training needs assessment
• Have a personal development plan in place.

74. Training is seen as vitally important in enabling councillors to perform their duties effectively and should be ongoing for all councillors based on their individual development needs. Councils will wish to ensure that sufficient mechanisms are in place to allow councillors to take these opportunities. There is evidence of good practice in a number of local authorities, the sharing of which may be of benefit to other councils. There may also be opportunities through COSLA and the Improvement Service to consider whether certain aspects of councillor training could be pooled nationally enabling councillors also to benefit from experiences of other councillors in similar councils to their own.

Publication of Training

75. Councils should keep an up to date record of training undertaken by councillors which should be made available to members of the public on request. Councils themselves should decide whether to publish information on councillor training at the same time as they publish information on councillors' expenses. They should also decide what that information should be and whether it should be published on the council website or elsewhere. The type of information published should inform the public in a meaningful way.

Scottish Government
April 2010