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Setting up a Local Network
Things to do
You need a Local Network Leader who will be responsible to your County Network Leader. You need to establish a Constitution, and appoint a local chairman/person, and a treasurer at the minimum, you may also need to appoint a Secretary. Your local meeting times and frequency you can determine for yourselves, and your programme needs to be balanced and generally in accordance with the stuff on the Programme page.
Currently we have Quarterly Network meetings to which your Network Leader plus the local Network officers can attend, and one of those meetings is designated an Annual County Scout Network Conference to which all members will be invited which will take the form of a forum at which questions and discussion can take place, and at which a County Scout Network Committee will be elected to help with the administration of the County, to promote a County Network Programme and inter County Programme, and to develop further Local Network within the County.
Membership Registration
Registration of membership is on-line and accessed from the previous page - How do I Join. This is a bit of programming magic which does a few different things when you sign up. Firstly it sends an email back to the person applying with contact details, it then sends another email to the County Scout Network Commissioner and tells him that his case-load has just gone up by one, and finally it sorts out all the information that was incorporated into the form, and puts it on to a retrievable database. That's neat, and cuts out all the administration and makes life easy - 'cause we like easy! It enables us at County, to get on with the job of making life at Local level easy.
Constitution
The Local Network will need some rules by which they can operate, and to this end there is a Template Constitution in pdf format that has been prepared and can be downloaded [ HERE ]
Having downloaded the Template, you need to substitute your own District name where it says <LOCAL>, and a signature and a name where the other <> brackets suggest. You may if you wish have another name other than the name of the District to identify your own Local Network Group, in which case use that instead, and to confuse matters further - a Local Network Group may consist of more than one District combination so do what seems sensible, so long as you follow the general pattern.
This template is not mandatory, and you may if you wish, make up your own, but we have made this one available so that you can get to doing what you are all about the quicker and not having to worry too much about structure and stuff like that - the template has been prepared in order to make things easier - we like easy!
Role of the Treasurer
Subs: All members will be reuired to pay subs on a regular basis to cover the expenses of the Network unit. There are three elements to subs: County Capitation, District Capitation, Network sub. Any member who is a warranted leader or warranted helper will not be required to pay either County or District sub since these will be paid for by the group to which they are attached, and they will only have to pay the Network sub. To give a rough idea of how much this amounts to, the County Capitation was £23.00 for the last year, District Capitation varies between Districts but will probably be about £3/4.00 per year, and your Network sub will be what you decide, but let's say it is £4.00 per year, which makes a total of say - £30.00 per year, or £2.50 per month. Best practice is to get the members to pay their subs by standing order so that the poor old treasurer does not have to keep chasing up late payers.
For the most part, Network units are County based units, but nevertheless it is fair to pay a District Capitation since geographically you will be located in a District and maybe sharing District facilities such as meeting place, and equipment from time to time.
The Local Network Treasurer will be responsible for any money received by the Network Group and will have to account for it. A bank account may need to be opened, but there are various rules for this and for accountability to the County Network Treasurer that have to complied with, and operating methods that will have to be put in place. A copy of those rules may be downloaded [ HERE ].
Your County Scout Network Leader
The Network Leader for each of the Units within the Staffordshire County is responsible to the CSNC, and to the Conference through their role on the County Scout Network Committee. Their role is to carry out the wishes of Conference at Local level, to promote Network at local level within the County and to advise and assist the local Networks to formulate a balanced programme, to communicate County matters that affect the local situation, and to communicate back any difficulties or queries that local networks are quite capable of thinking up, that no-one else has thought of. They also have authority to supervise the Awards Scheme and to see that adequate standards are met. In other words, they are your first call local help and a resource to be used for specialist or technical help or to source specialist event leadership.
Your County Scout Network Commissioner
Bruce Field: His role is to be responsible for Network within Staffordshire County and he is responsible to the County Commissioner - Jeremy Cotton. The CSNC works through the elected County Scout Network Committee and the appointed CSNL's, and he has special responsibility to oversee the Diamond, Platinum, Queen Scout and DofE Awards, all others being looked after by the CSNL's. He is available to call on by Local Networks and his contact details are at the foot of the last page.
Network is now becoming of age and providing many districts with challenging programmes for their 18-25 membership in Staffordshire, Tony's first priority was to get some sort of registration process off the ground so that Network members could be identified, and at the same time put in place a communication system. This has been done but there are still some Districts without Network representation.
We currently have Units set up at Moorlands, Keele University, Potteries North, Three Towns, Stafford, Tamworth, Cannock and Beaudesert (Lichfield). We still are not represented in Uttoxeter, Burton or Newcastle.
We now have a County Noticeboard where members can post their events and a link to a Regional Noticeboard where wider publicity can be given.
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