I’ll be giving updates of the three months between my election at the end of March and taking office on July 1st.

So, its May. I’m increasingly tired, increasingly confused and increasingly out of pocket. There are a few items on the agenda within my union which I need to finalise before I leave to become National Treasurer, securing Fairtrade recognition and ensuring my successor receives the best handover possible, but there are meetings for NUS which I can't miss, expectations that I need to deliver on, and issues that need resolving so come July I’m able to start fulfilling my potential. Needless to say, working seven days a week and travelling all around the country led to illness and a visit to the doctor who diagnosed me as stressed – what do these people know anyway?!?

During my election speech, I talked about the need for the National Treasurer to take greater ownership of unions in further education, it was unfair to expect the VP FE to be both the expert on policy in a billion pound sector and be aware of issues affecting 400 or so students’ unions. Although I have no doubt Beth is able to do this; no longer can we refer to FE when its politically advantageous. I had the opportunity to spend the day travelling around FE unions in the South East, from Mid Kent and West Kent to Thanet and Harlow College, discovering the impact of our Development Workers, seeing the results of learner voice strategies, but most importantly, visibly seeing where students are given support, given resources and given a voice, they have ownership over the future of the college, delivering a strengthen student community. It was amazing to talk to the Students’ Association at Harlow College, and see a supportive Student Services Department, where it wasn’t just about the number of parties or events they could hold, but had a focus on ways in which to strengthen the learner voice.

Further education students of today are the higher education students of tomorrow, so the sooner we are able to involve them within a students’ union, and within NUS, the greater our student movement can become.

The day following the FE Tour I was in Macclesfield for a NUS Services Finance & Resources Meeting, discussing the new business model, the ongoing success of central billing, and opportunities where NUS and NUS Services could (and should) work much closely together. As Company Chair, my responsibility is to Chair the meeting, but I feel that one of the Student Directors from a students’ union would give the meeting more focus and allow me to focus on questioning and ensuring accountability, rather than keeping time, so hopefully we’ll be able to make the necessary changes over the next year.

I had two finance meetings to better understand my role as National Treasurer, and scope out expectations of my responsibilities to other people within NUS. My first was with our Financial Controller, lunch was delicious, and as he will be one of the people I have to work most closely with, I want to begin the year ensuring there is the right balance between operational responsibility and political accountability. Political accountability isn’t signing every cheque, and nor is it creating new codes for the finance manual, but it is understanding the procedures, the language and the processes, all the while giving the organisation and the NEC the context and the financial impact of change and its decisions.

I visited Westminster Students’ Union to have a meeting with the Chair of NUS Finance Committee. I am grateful to Salima for allowing me to have Graham to myself the whole day, and I found the discussion invaluable. We spent some time talking about the relationship between the Treasurer, Finance Committee, Conference and the finances of NUS, the impact one should have on another, and what I need to be doing to ensure that FC is able to fulfil its role. I had a tasty bagel from their venue, and a refreshing bottle of Diet Coke, but after lunch we went into detail and depth about the new affiliation fee calculation and regime. The new calculation is much fairer, although not perfect, but it certainly will give unions more confidence and scope to accept their individual challenges. Much work will have to be undertaken to ensure that it is a success in its first year of operation, particularly around transitional arrangements, hardship requests and abatement considerations, but I’m ready to fulfil conference mandates and make the process much more transparent.

My students’ union have recently joined Cohort Three of the Students’ Union Evaluation Initiative (SUEI) a fantastic opportunity for the organisation to identify its strengths and weaknesses, comparing its culture and its processes against others, all leading to a focused, more effective and more efficient students’ union. It was our second cohort meeting, we got to showcase our volunteer accreditation scheme, and although more time was spent travelling than actually meeting, you really come away with the feeling that the union has the right strategic objectives, but there is much more to do. There are lots of unions that want to participate, but identify the cost as the main barrier, if only we at NUS were able to do something about that…

As National Treasurer I sit on the Board of NUS Holdings Limited, the Company which looks after the assets of NUS, after the meeting I had a dash to Bournemouth for NUS South Presidential Residential, dancing until 2am, and the first train back to London for NUS Finance Committee. It was my first experience of Finance Committee, and I was impressed by the passion of the members of FC to fulfil their mandates from National Conference, but they were let down by a lack of financial context, and an overwhelming amount of paper and information. I was tasked to go away and look at some criteria for hardship requests, but more than this, I’ll be working with the Chair of Finance Committee to make sure I can properly be held to account and they are able to be much more effective with their time.

And onto June 2007…

dave x

dave.lewis@nus.org.uk

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