Last night I had the very good fortune to be awarded by the local Government Information Unit Online Councillor of the Year award 2011.

Sadly this isn’t for my fabulous blogging or mind blowing tweets. Its recognition for all the efforts I put into serving residents of East Dulwich online via the East Dulwich Forum. Effectively its like an online surgery but held publicly. Where a problem or issue is private people either start by contacting me privately or we move into private mode.

Since I started actively working in this way 18 months ago via the forum over 43,000 visits to the main thread and 1,400 posts. With such a high turnover of posts huge gamut of topics covered. I’ve learnt lots and hopefully I’ve helped many many people.

I didn’t get to make a thank you speech so being a little self indulgent I’d like to thank my family who put up with me begin a councillor – I’m not always their for the mas a result and they take it with good humour and are still supportive. I’m a very lucky man. To all the Lib Dem colleagues – it is a great local team and their pearls of wisdom and help practically are invaluable to me. And last but definitely not least all the council officers, other residents, local Police and others who help me find the right answers to fix problems or just point people in the right direction. Fantastic.

The academic team of Hugh Flouch and Kevin Harris from the http://networkedneighbourhoods.com/ have studied my online work. They show that over 50% of EDF residents attitudes to councillors have improved, and over 20% of attitudes towards council officers and the local Police have improved. So hopefully we’re doing something right.