He has spoken with the Town Clerk and has resigned his seat on Tweeps council. No by-election is planned.

While many are more relevant to officers than councillors (a good reason to have the C’llr awards) several may be of interest to councillors:

• Political team of the year
• Councillor development achievement of the year
• Best achieving council of the year

There are a couple of sessions that might be of particular interest to those involved in local government and social media.

First is Leadership 2.0: why local authorities need to be learning organisations led by the fantastic Dave Briggs:

For all the talk of the online revolution and the growth of social networking, the interesting bit remains the implications of the technology rather than the technology itself. This session explores the opportunities for improvement and efficiency that the new culture of openness and sharing brings - and how councillors can make sure their councils make the most of them.

The second, Making social networking work for you, is a team effort between Anne Rehill from Standards for England, Ingrid Koehler from IDeA and Mary Reid a Kingston councillor:

The internet and the phenomenon of social networking have fundamentally changed the way we work and communicate with each other. This interactive session provides practical examples of how councillors can use social networking effectively and ethically to engage with and deliver to local communities.

Now… what’s the hashtag?

Due in large part to some recruiting at Wirral Council by Cllr Chris Blakeley the Conservatives, very briefly, became the largest party in the listings, with 129 councillors to the Liberal Democrats 128.

This is the first time since the site was created that the Liberal Democrats haven’t held the lead. A symbolic moment. But also a very short-lived moment. Almost immediately (and today’s last addition) we were told about Cllr Timothy Ball, a Liberal Democrat from Bath and North East Somerset Council - putting the Liberal Democrats back into joint first.

The last time the Conservatives looked like seriously challenging the Liberal Democrats for top spot there was an almighty response from Liberal Democrat tweeters which put them firmly back in the lead. Will they be able to mount such a fight-back again?

Of course, such stats are not that meaningful since we know many do not tweet; some have given up, some have never got the hang of it, and others seem to have joined Twitter as a purely voyeuristic exercise. Just as having a large following might just indicate that spammers haven’t been blocked, being a councillor on - or off - Twitter doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of their engagement or work as a locally elected leader.

But let’s not worry about fairness or statistical accuracy. Let’s have some league tables.

Party standings
The Lib Dems retain their lead at the head of the league table. The Conservatives continue to be a close second with Labour in third - not totally out of reach, but with some work to do.

Tweeting councils
Lambeth has long held the record as the ‘tweetingest’ council. There are currently 14 accounts associated with councillors there.

However, that may not reflect the number of tweeting councillors, since some of those belong to ‘ward’ accounts where individual councillors also tweet (inflating the figure) but likewise the whole Conservative group operates just one account. This happens elsewhere and means it’s not possible to accurately state how many councillors are actually tweeting - since you cannot tell how many people are operating a joint account.

The top ten (which is actually 11, because of the joint standings) is based purely on the number of twitter accounts, it may be other councils, in which councillors co-operated in a joint account, actually have more tweeting councillors.

It goes without saying that this is only accurate at the time of writing (and actually wasn’t that accurate even then, since there were two additions while the figures were compiled) but it can only - surely - be healthy for online engagement that both tables are so close.

One of the key parts of the event will be the Councillor of the Year award for which nominations are currently being taken.

Obviously modesty (and the fact he or she isn’t a real councillor) means Cllr Tweeps will not be entering. But if you want to nominate anyone - or even nominate yourself - get along to the LGIU’s councillor awards page.

Most are self-explanatory and are simply lists by party. We have created a list for any group that had two or more members, some of the smaller ones are very low volume and we suspect - because Cllr Tweeps is a member of each list - some will just mirror the CllrTweeps feed.

However, if you are interested in seeing how one party’s councillors are reacting to a particular issue, or only have interest in one party you might be interested in some or all of the following (in alphabetical order)

BNP: @CllrTweeps/bnp
Conservatives: @CllrTweeps/conservatives
DUP: @CllrTweeps/dup
Green: @CllrTweeps/green
Independents: @CllrTweeps/independent
Labour: @CllrTweeps/labour
Liberal Democrats: @CllrTweeps/liberal-democrats
Residents’ Association: @CllrTweeps/residents-association
SNP: @CllrTweeps/snp

There are two non-party lists. The first is a very self-explanatory all councillors feed @CllrTweeps/councillors which contains all the tweets of all councillors we list.

The second is a little more experimental. The CllrTweeps database has, but has not been using, the ability to group regionally. To date we’ve not really seen much of a use of this, it’s just been there in case. However, we have created a London list, simply to see how much interest there is (if any) in it. London was chosen for the simple reason that it has more tweeting councillors than any other region.

The London region is at @CllrTweeps/london.

As stated in the previous post on lists - these are not totally complete. A surprising number of councillors have private feeds (and judging by the friends/followers numbers on many of them these may well be abandoned or purely personal accounts) and there is one minor party councillor who has chosen to block CllrTweeps and, therefore, cannot be included on a list by us.

We hope you find them useful and would love to hear what you think of them.

Well curse no more. Thanks to Twitter’s lists feature you can do just that. The first list we’ve created is http://twitter.com/CllrTweeps/councillors and it pretty much does what is says on the tin. It’s a twitter stream of every councillor we’ve found so far.

There are a few exceptions.

1. We’ll be adding ourselves to all the lists (although Cllr Tweeps isn’t technically a councillor, we hope you think of him like an honorary alderman).
2. We cannot add councillors with private streams, and there are a surprising number of them
3. One councillor has blocked us, so we cannot follow or list them (yes, we were surprised too, but we’re sure they have their reasons).

We’ll be adding more relevant lists as time progresses and will announce them here and on Twitter when they are complete.

Hopefully you’ll think it’s worth it.

In the meantime we are keeping our register as up to date as possible (we always announce new councillors on our Twitter account) so if you know any councillors we don’t, drop us a line at site@cllrtweeps.com or leave us a comment.

Since our last update blog post we’ve added:
Timothy Godfrey - Labour - London Borough of Croydon
Jeff Green - Conservative - Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council
Steve Bullock - Labour - London Borough of Lewisham
Karen Alexander - Liberal Democrat - London Borough of Haringey
Ian McCord - Conservative - South Northamptonshire District Council
Nicky Wildy - Labour - Plymouth City Council
Richard Pitts - Unknown - Marlborough Town Council
Carolyn Baker - Liberal Democrat - London Borough of Haringey
Paul Noblet - Liberal Democrat - London Borough of Southwark
Salma Yaqoob - Respect - Birmingham City Council
Angela Graham - Conservative - London Borough of Wandsworth
Gwenllian Lansdown - Plaid Cymru - Cardiff City Council
Maggie Chapman - Green Party - Edinburgh City Council
David Potts - Conservative - South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council
Tony Williams - Conservative - Norfolk County Council
Scott Seaman-Digby - Conservative - London Borough of Hillingdon
Gavin Maclure - Conservative - Ipswich Borough Council
John Jillings - Conservative - Cannock Chase Council District Council
Darrell Mawle - Liberal Democrat - Cannock Chase Council District Council
Jonathan Knott - Labour - London Borough of Newham
Bob Smytherman - Liberal Democrat - Worthing Borough Council
Michael Berridge - Liberal Democrat - Canterbury City Council
James Flanagan - Liberal Democrat - Canterbury City Council
Steve Dye - Liberal Democrat - Canterbury City Council
Jo Calvert-Mindell - Liberal Democrat - Canterbury City Council
John Friary - Labour - London Borough of Southwark
Alison McGovern - Labour - London Borough of Southwark
Tudor Evans - Labour - Plymouth City Council
Paula Keaveney - Liberal Democrat - Liverpool City Council
Philip Parkin - Conservative - Birmingham City Council
Stephen Allison - UKIP - Hartlepool Borough Council
Niknam Hussain - Liberal Democrat - Buckinghamshire County Council
Robert-John Tasker - Conservative - London Borough of Kingston
William Lloyd - Conservative - Brentwood Borough Council
Matthew Scott - Conservative - London Borough of Bexley
Andy Bayford - Conservative - Leicester City Council
Ian Gilbert - Labour - Southend-on-Sea Borough Council
Stuart Hutton - Conservative - Cheltenham Borough Council
Jonathan Simpson - Labour - London Borough of Camden
Julian Bell - Labour - London Borough of Ealing
Darren Cranshaw - Unknown - Brindle Parish Council
Dianne Snowdon - Labour - Sunderland City Council
John Dodd - Liberal Democrat - Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council
Derek Antrobus - Labour - Salford City Council
Jeremy Oates - Conservative - Tamworth Borough Council
James Keeley - Conservative - Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council
Lesley Rennie - Conservative - Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council
Bill Stevens - Labour - Plymouth City Council
Katrina Bull - Labour - Nottingham City Council
Paul Farmer - Conservative - St Edmundsbury Borough Council
Lucy Watt - Liberal Democrat - London Borough of Islington
Kim Forward - Labour - Hastings Borough Council
Trevor Webb - Labour - Hastings Borough Council
Darren Fower - Liberal Democrat - Peterborough City Council
Jenny Antill - Conservative - Babergh District Council
Al Barry - Conservative - Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council
David Archer - Ulster Unionist Party - Lisburn City Council
Grant Thoms - Scottish National Party - Glasgow City Council
Gillian Renwick - Scottish National Party - East Dunbartonshire Council
Owen Thompson - Scottish National Party - Midlothian Council
Chris Best - Labour - London Borough of Lewisham
Rene Kinzett - Conservative - Swansea City Council
John Beacroft-Mitchell - Liberal Democrat - Hebden Royd Town Council
Ravi Govindia - Conservative - London Borough of Wandsworth
John Hallmark - Conservative - London Borough of Wandsworth
Raj Chandarana - Labour - London Borough of Croydon
Neil Matthews - Liberal Democrat - Shepway District Council
Colin Elsbury - Plaid Cymru - Caerphilly County Borough Council
Glenise Morgan - Liberal Democrat - Bristol City Council
Beccy Hopfensperger - Conservative - Suffolk County Council
Tony Howard - Labour - East Lindsey District Council

If you are a councillor or know a councillor we don’t have listed, then tell us by emailing site@cllrtweeps.com or leaving a comment.