Conference Latest

We are close to booking an important additional session.  We've invited the Audit Commission to give a presentation on their evaluation of local authorities' empty homes work.  We hope to confirm that by the end of the week.  This may encourage senior managers to ransack their over-stretched budgets to let you go. Or even go themselves.  Hopefully as well as, not instead of.

Meantime, some people want to know about the venue and hotels.  The conference isn't being held in a hotel this time.  It's at the Studio.  Here's the link if you want to check it out.

http://www.studiovenues.co.uk/

Hotels are already booking up for May, so if you were intending to stary overnight then I suggeset you book soon if you want a city centre hotel.  Otherwise, there is a good local rail network in Brimingham and guest-houses a bit further out might prove suitable.

We're not taking bookings for another week or so - until we have sorted through the questionnaires.  There will be 120 places.  If you are an early-bird booker you shouldn't have a problem securing a place.

Conference Questionnaire

Thanks to those of you that have completed them.  We have only had a handful returned so far.  We know that some people have had problems downloading the questionnaire or saving it. There is no clear pattern about which version of Internet Explorer people are using and there doesn't semm a lot we can do about it from this end.    The best bet is to download it to your PC, update it, then email it back.   If you get completely stuck, email admin@naepp.org.uk and we will email the questionnaire back to you.

For the moment, here are a couple of links to help you get at the questionnaire if you have had trouble so far:

http://www.naepp.org.uk/system/files/QuestionnaireFeb2010.xls

http://www.naepp.org.uk/newsletter-issue/naepp-newsletter-2010-02-14-national-conference-special

EDMOs - are they dead or do they just smell funny?

The Tories are talking about scrapping EDMOs and we are sure you are aware that there is now a useful discussion going on in our EDMO forum.  Please join in!  Here's the link the thread:

http://www.naepp.org.uk/forum-topic/threat-edmos-empty-homes-agency-and-naepp-need-your-input

But what about the EDMO session at the conference??  Well, fortunately we also have sessions with expert speakers on Enforcement generally and CPOs - so we will tweak the programme accordingly nearer the day if it turns out that the Tories get into power and abolish EDMOs. Of course, if EDMOs do go, these other powers will become more important.

Subscriber Status

We now have a new flyer on Subscriber status along with a new page about it on the Help menu.  We kind of hope that some people who are associates and can't get their authorities to pay for "Corproate Membership" might have more luck asking to be able to access the Resource Library.  Other than that our target is is RSLs, governmental bodies etc.  If you can promote it amongst such agencies  - that would be a big help.  Here is the link to the flyer:

http://www.naepp.org.uk/library-item/naepp-subscriber-option-summary

Death by email

As the site gets more active, you may start to feel bombarded with emails.  The real solution to that lies in the new notification system which we keep promising and not delivering.  We are restarting testing over the next couple of days.  Sorry about the delay.

However, in the meantime, the frequency of notifications has been reduced to 9 hours, so you will get fewer notifications with more items in them.  So if you post in a forum and wonder why you haven't been notified of your post, that's why: it's on its way but it's taking its time.