Things to consider

We are consulting on two topics this year, so you will want to consider if you would like to have one meeting which covers both, or as they are fairly substantial and wide-reaching topics, whether you would prefer to focus on one topic per meeting.

Branches and Party Councils are not required to submit on both topics – if only one topic is of particular interest, you can contribute only to that topic

Things to consider

• Who are you looking to invite? If many of your members work during the day, you may prefer to have an evening or weekend meeting. If you are organising an event for councillors and they are used to having daytime meetings, a weekday may be more suitable. You could email members to see if they have a preference.
• The deadline is the end of June – if you have local elections coming up, you may wish to have your meeting before the end of February or after the elections in May so that your members can spend the run-up to the election out on the doorstep

Things to consider

• Is the venue accessible?
• Is the venue available on the date you have chosen?
• If you would like the event to be more informal and social, you could consider using a room at a local pub or café. Check with the venue how busy the venue is likely to be on the date you hope to hold the meeting – if it’s very busy, it may be difficult for members to hear and participate
• Other options might include a community hall, village hall, residents’ association hall, a room at a library, allotments hall, school building, or a church hall. Your local council may have a list of local community venues.
• Many venues charge a small fee for use – if you don’t have the branch funds to pay for this, you can cover this by asking members for a voluntary contribution after the meeting, or apply to your local Party Council for the funds to cover room hire. If you’re not sure how to do this, please write to policy@party.coop

There are many ways to structure a policy discussion.

Two popular ways to do this are:

1. Organise one or two relevant speakers to introduce the topic before opening it out for a wider debate. Speakers could include local councillors, a local MP, a member of the Party with particular expertise, your local NEC representative, a local community leader for a relevant organisation such as a credit union or campaign group, an academic, a representative from a relevant charity, etc.
2. Organise a facilitated open discussion, where the chair or other officer is responsible for introducing the topics and facilitating a discussion of members. Their role is to make sure everyone has the chance to contribute and that the responses stay topical to the consultation questions.

Things to consider

• You can list your policy discussion event on the Co-operative Party website – see this link
• Your branch secretary can email members about the event
• Make sure you give members sufficient notice to take part – best practice is to give at least a week’s notice (and ideally longer)
• Don’t forget to include the date, time, venue and topic, and include the link (here) to the online consultation for anyone who can’t attend but would like to contribute
• You might consider sending a reminder to members the night before to make sure people remember to show up!

Things to consider

• You can print the consultation documents here – we have formatted these in a way to make them easy to print for meetings
• Make sure one of your branch officers or members is happy to take notes – these will need to be written up afterwards for submission
• Take a photo with members or of the discussion and encourage members to Tweet and share on Facebook – you can tag us using @coopparty on Twitter or “the Co-operative Party” on Facebook

Things to consider

• Please type up your notes and submit them here before 30^th June
• You might wish to circulate your notes to members afterwards so that those in attendance can be confident that their points were included, and those who couldn’t make it can learn about the discussion.
• If you invited speakers, you may wish to send a thank you note afterwards – hopefully they enjoyed the experience and will look to get more involved with the Party in the future!