In collaboration with the Liberal Democrat European Group, the Federal Policy Committee are organising regional events giving members a chance to shape our policy on Europe. We want to hear your thoughts on what our priority areas should be, what solutions you might have to problems raised and how we can continue to promote a close relationship with Europe.

The autumn party conferences traditionally mark the start of the new political season. They are a time to reflect on the past year and set out plans to succeed in the coming year.

Both politics and coronavirus have made it a tough time since the last round of conferences. But we can look forward to this new political season with confidence that if we continue to raise our game, we can prosper. We've seen signs of that already, including with Sarah Green's fantastic win in Chesham and Amersham and also with the latest net favourability leadership polling from Savanta ComRes:

The Federal Conference Committee recently met to discuss the Conference format for 2022.

We considered a number of options for next year's conferences and took the difficult decision to hold Spring Conference as an online conference and only returning to an in-person event for Autumn Conference. The dates of Spring Conference will be 11-13 March 2022 and we will announce the dates and venue for Autumn Conference in due course.

On Monday 18th of October the Board will hosting a surgery for all Party members.

This is an open invitation to everyone, whether you have a burning question for us, would just like to get to know the Board a bit better, or have an issue you'd like to raise. We are all ears.

The session will run from 18:00-19:00, please feel free to drop in and out as best fits your day, and you can register here.

Are we heading towards another winter of discontent? The last major occurrence was in 1978-79 when Callaghan's Labour government failed to control widespread strikes against pay controls. The behaviour of far-left unions did not help. The situation has some parallels. This government is letting us all down.

Councillor Luigi Gregori, our local Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesperson commented:

"I could not get onto our road into town as it was blocked by traffic queueing to get into a petrol station. That has now gone because they have run out of fuel to sell. Blaming the public for panic buying is not good enough. We have already seen shortages on our shop shelves. That should have been a wake-up call, yet it was ignored.

As seats begin to elect new Parliamentary election candidates, now's the time to get your stationary stocked up.

After requests from a number of new candidates, we've worked with Election Workshop to put together a fantastic deal to ensure your candidate has a well stocked supply of letterheads for responding to casework.

This Autumn, we say goodbye to Isabelle Parasram, our Vice President responsible for working with ethnic minority communities.

Isabelle has been a tremendous advocate, leader and example in the Party and she will be greatly missed. We wish her all the best in her new role as Chief Executive of Social Value UK, which has led to her making the difficult decision to step back from the demands of the Vice Presidential role.