It’s only 5 working days to go #PPMAHR18.

The end is nearly in sight for our amazing PPMA Conference team. Our incoming President Karen says “Leatham, Grace, Kim and Steve have played an enormous role in putting this conference together. We have also been blessed by the tremendous support of our Leeds City Council colleagues, led by Emma Browes.

It’s been really hard work and we’ve become experts at two things – remote working – we’re great fans of Skype – and flexible working, which basically means we’ve not had much sleep for a while!

Each of these fabulous colleges have played a huge part in this event. Grace has amazed us all with how she has coped with her first conference – it’s hard to believe she’s only been with us since January.

Kim is our stalwart and has years of experience in putting these events together. She and I (yet again) have shared more late hours on email dealing with bookings and other queries than I’d like to remember. Kim has become a true friend and I will be ever grateful to PPMA for that.

Our Leeds team have brought their considerable experience from the October Northern Forum to support annual conference. We have an incredible Yorkshire and Humber contingent coming to conference this year. The region is so lucky to have Lorraine Hallam as Chair. She will build on from the wonderful work of her predecessor Justine Brooksbank to have this region really humming!

Leatham has brought a creative spark that has set of an incredible few weeks of planning for our Masquerade Ball; and Steve, has brought us real challenge to ensure that every aspect of conference is grounded in great practice. These are two amazing men and I’ll be a better President for them being in the Principal Officer team.

It’s been a privilege to be part of this team. When Sue Evans, PPMA President in 2016/17 was giving her opening speech in Aston I remember that she said organising conference was like a wedding reception. You were excited by it but at the same time hoping it was all over soon. I really empathise with that.

I hope by the time we get to April 21st, we will have done Sue, Caroline and other Past Presidents proud”.