I currently work with the General Secretary and other Societies Union Executive Committee (SUEC) members to allocation a pool of money (about 10 thousand pounds) between our societies. The system does need improvements and I've been working on that with SUEC over the course of this year.

As a member of Union Council I was also involved in the allocation of the Union Council reserve and often spoke when allocations came up in favour of any moves that would allow students to do more.

While GSA Vice-President I was involved in the budgetting process and responsible for the education and welfare budget.

I'm also the only person in recent memory to meet with the Gen Sec, Accountant and General manager and spend over an hour with them going through the union budget. On that occasion I noticed a 10p per week rise in rent for the housing office and other changes that otherwise weren't mentioned to students. If elected General Secretary I'll make the financial information far easier for students to understand.

One of the roles of General Secretary is to be a Trustee of the Union. In the last year and a half I've been a Charity Trustee for the NPC (National Postgraduate Committee). I have some understanding of the requirements for running a charity, and with proposed changes to charity law that will affect LUSU this could be useful. During my three years at Lancaster I have also served on the Management Committee for Lancaster University Chaplaincy Center. I was also a member of the Executive of the Lancaster University Alumni Association, taking on this role on behalf of the LUSU President.

I'm also currently serving my second year as the student observer on the QAA Board of Directors. The QAA (in addition to being the regulator for UK universities) is also a charity. The board of directors are the trustees and manage the corporate direction and finances of the organisation at the meetings I attend. The latest annual report (to be released during the sabbatical campaign) shows the QAA as having an income of over 11.5 million pounds, I play an active part in their finance discussions.

The people I work with on the board are leaders in the corporate world, the education sector and the public sector. What distinguishes them is their focus on the student experience and the understanding of the need to ensure quality without being a burden. What I've learned from them would be of great value to LUSU if I had the chance to start applying it.

Reducing regulation is something LUSU needs to start doing. There is too much regulation and too much of our time and money is spent on it. Much of this work could be done equally well through enhancement, i.e. through systems that are designed to help student leaders develop their skills, rather than simply telling them off for doing something wrong. We need to support our student leaders, not manage and control them.

The title picture to this page is from a QAA hosted dinner that took place as part of events to mark the start of the UK Presidency of the EU. I met the President of the European Students' Union (who NUS affiliate to) at this meeting and we had a good chat about the needs of student and how universities often fail to deliver. When I got back to Lancaster and heard a senior university officer talk about share holders and how he had attended one of these events and therefore knew his stuff... I put him in his place. When Lord Taylor did the same to him, he offered to consider handing in his resignation. Instead university proposals were change to give students a greater say in university corporate governance. LUSU needs someone who knows the education sector to convince the university to give students what they need.