NALC Copyrighted Materials - A Member Only Benefit

Following on from our previous news item, it is unfortunate to have been notified by NALC that a council not in LRALC/NALC membership has had to be warned about using NALC copyrighted materials (new model Financial Regulations) that they are not entitled to use. The ethos of LRALC/NALC membership is one of every member council paying into a collective pot to collectively benefit from the representation, advice, training, resources, model documents, and more.

Councils who do not pay into the collective pot still benefit from the payments of those who do with things like the parliamentary lobbying by NALC being funded from it, and we can only hope that those councils feel morally obliged in the future to contribute towards the cost of something they and their communities directly benefit from.

However, with copyrighted materials it is a much more black and white issue - if you contribute towards it, you can use it, if you don't, you can't. The materials you can access as members councils have HUGE commercial value and are member only. Its therefore unfair on the councils who do play by the rules and contribute collectively for councils to choose not to be members but still access and use materials via "the backdoor".