The training day hosted by Rother ALC was a great success with representation from nearly all 33 Town and Parish Councils in Rother District.
This was the second annual Parish Online training day held in Battle, East Sussex. It was organised by Gill Colquhoun from Rother Association of Local Councils. RALC have brokered a group discount for Parish Online meaning all Local Councils can have access to the software through RALC.
This training day was designed to act as a refresher to long-term users, but also an introduction to new Clerks and Councillors that have joined their Council recently.
This was a practical session so there were over 25 people on Laptops and Tablets using Parish Online at the same time, along with Chris who was presenting the software on a big screen. This gave the attendees the opportunity to learn the features of the software and try them out in their own account at the same time.
The training covered all aspects of Parish Online, including producing digital asset registers, extracting address data and producing printouts for sharing with colleagues and the public.
During the session there was an open discussion on what additional information they would like to see in Parish Online. The conclusion was that there was a lot of information held by Rother District Council and East Sussex County Council that would be very useful for their work; tree preservation orders, traffic regulation order, public rights of way, among others. The Councils representatives collectively agreed to lobby those organisations to get access to that data so it can go into Parish Online. This is something the Parish Online team are keen to support.
Aside from the noisy Zumba session in the room next-door, the training session received positive feedback and has really helped Clerks and Councillors use Parish Online for the tasks that are most important to them. Many are already utilising the new Asset Register layers that are being rolled out to Parish Online accounts.
If you’re an ALC or a group of Councils and you’d like to host a Parish Online training day then please get in touch. Also, look out for our online training sessions coming up in December.