Regional Officers

Our present internal organisation is based on the EU regions, because these fit the elections we will be fighting at various levels, and are part of preparing to fight the 2014 European election. Prior to the UK General Election we have just fought, I made interim appointments of regional administrators to a number of these, who have been serving in that role during the campaign.

The time has now come, as we expand, to formalise these roles, and to make them directly elected by the members of that region. Based on what successful regional administrators have been doing, and our future needs, I have outlined here what becoming an elected Regional Administrative Officer will involve.

This is new ground; if you have any comments or suggestions, please send them to me for consideration.

Nomination period and member votes for RAOs

Presently I hope to formally open nominations for Regional Administrative Officers next weekend, from Sunday 16th May, for a period of one week, and that will be followed by a member vote open to members of that region for candidates who present themselves. There are some adjustments to the voting system we presently use to enable that, so if the timescales change I'll provide fresh information as necessary.

These will be announced by email to members by region, and it may be that our records aren't absolutely accurate or that the registered address we have is not currently where the member is located and active. Therefore if you receive those notifications for a region which is incorrect for you when nominations and then voting open, please advise and we will correct that so you can vote for the RAO most relevant to you.

There is only one region (North East England) where we presently have relatively few members, so we may not yet be able to hold a meaningful regional election. After that most areas have quite good PPUK member representation, so I hope we will be able to have a successful officer election; the next most sparse area at present is Wales, however we really need a strong organisation developed there as (like Scotland) we will need to be fighting a devolved election in Wales within a year.

Other upcoming votes

There may also be other nomination periods and member voting happening, for campaigns officer, for deputy treasurer ratifications, and for the newly enacted Board of Governors now mandated by our constitution. It is likely that we will seek to combine the notification of these where possible, and further information on that will follow in due course.