Hello PPMA members and friends

Another year has flown by, and it’s hard to believe that our 2024 annual conference is imminent. It’s being held at the Birmingham Conference and Events Centre on the 24th to 26th April 2024.

I’m hugely grateful to my colleagues on the PPMA board who have worked hard to put the conference together. We’re preparing to celebrate another great year, thinking about some fantastic individual and team achievements, and recognising our stars now and stars of the future.

As an association, we’ve continued to go from strength to strength, with membership increasing. We’ve tried to ensure that what we bring you throughout the year is current and topical, and also value for money. Our talent programmes have been hugely popular with record numbers of applications, and I’ve been privileged to meet and work with some fantastic individuals and groups throughout the year.

As ever, we’ve sought to ensure that at the conference, there’s a mix of inspiring and thought-provoking speakers and interactive breakout sessions, and we’ve focused on really relevant topics. We’ve got sessions on leadership, disruption, key workforce challenges, flexible working, healthy workplaces, peak performance and resilience, bad banter, the image of local government, happiness at work and AI. There should be something for everyone.

Our conference is a real opportunity to take time out from our busy and demanding day jobs – to network, to celebrate the great work and achievements over the last 12 months, and to broaden our thinking, not just regarding issues that we face now, but also how our sector and our profession are likely to change in the future.

Places at the conference are filling up, and booking details and the agenda are on the PPMA website. The Gala Dinner and Awards evening is a chance to properly acknowledge and highlight the best of our profession, and with the theme this year being ‘a night at the circus’, there’s a great chance for creativity as well as celebration!

I look forward to seeing many of you in Birmingham.

Gordon McFarlane, President – PPMA