Planning: Design Codes and Design Guidance

Join this hour long training session to learn how planning can support climate goals; understanding local policies on sustainability, design and resilience.

Alison Eardley is an independent planning consultant whose particular specialism is working with local councils and communities on neighbourhood planning. She started her career in economic development and tourism, first at the London Borough of Newham, followed by West Sussex Council. A relocation led to her moving to what was then the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster, later to become the Department of Communities and Local Government (now the levelling up department!), where Alison joined as a member of the Local Government Strategy Unit. This provided an interesting insight into drafting government policy and ministerial speech writing, including for the Empowerment and Local Government White Papers. The long commute to London, however, was not conducive to starting a family, which led Alison to take a home-based role with the national charity, Action for Market Towns. As Policy Lead, she wrote the refreshed Town Action Planning guidance and sat on the government roundtable for Neighbourhood Planning. Alison has been supporting neighbourhood plans since their inception in 2011 and won the Royal Town Planning Institute for Excellence in Planning for her work on the Warnham Neighbourhood Plan.

Kent Association of Local Councils uses its website and Eventbrite to announce its events so that delegates can choose the workshop or conference they wish to attend. At the present time, all our events are delivered online via the Zoom video conferencing programme, which we find suits everyone’s needs for when we cannot deliver traditional face to face venue events. Both Eventbrite and Zoom are easy to use with a few simple pointers.

We will always send out a “flyer” to inform our membership of upcoming events, so look out for them in your inbox.

There will always be a hyperlink for you to click on, which will direct you to our website in the first place.

The date and time will be shown here, with a brief description of the event. Click on the relevant link and that will take you straight to the Eventbrite booking page for the event you would like to join.

We strongly encourage individual Councillors to sign up for an event via the Clerk to the Council. However, when that is not possible, please check with your clerk before booking your own place.

There are two sections that need to be completed. One is the “ticket buyer” - this is the Clerk or Responsible Finance Officer. Invoices are generated automatically from the site, so you should know what is payable to KALC immediately. You should insert the name and contact details of the Clerk/RFO here so they receive our invoice at once. KALC no longer sends out invoices for Training and Events.

The second section refers to the “Attendee”. This is for the individual who will be attending the event. It is particularly important that the email address for that person is entered and is correct as this is where all joining instructions will be sent. Do double check the form before you hit the “Send” button.

If all your details are correct, you will receive a notification via Eventbrite (not KALC) one week before and again within 48 hours of the event that informs you of:

The date and time of registration

What you might need to read beforehand and any links that will provide that information

The joining instructions - a link to the Zoom account and Meeting ID should that fail.

We also provide contact details so that if you encounter any issue on the day, we can help you as much as possible.

That should mean that you get the best outcome from attending one of our online courses.

We are always happy to help if you have any problems in booking your place but hope that this guide will help you to book an event at your own leisure.