Welcome to this month's bulletin from the West London Working Provider Confederation.

March has been a busy month, we have held two interesting events. The first on the 10th focused on how to help provders develop consortia - with informative presentations from James Jennings (a specialist in this area) and TPP law (legal specialists). Their presentations can be found here:

Consortia and SPV Management
Developing a Consortium – the legal and practical considerations

Last week our Keeping ahead of the game event, held in Hammersmith, looked at how the new Performance Rating System for providers is being implemented in London and was followed by a moving account of how Faithregen, a third sector provider has developed its organisation to bid for and win FND contracts. You can find out more about the performance rating system here. The event concluded with our infamous Dragon's Den sessions which enable providers to test out their pitch and offer to Prime Contractors and get feedback. Not as daunting as it might sound, both providers and Prime contractors really value the opportunity to network and get the chance to test out their offer. Thanks to Sarina Russo and Serco for their Prime perspectives.

Our next event is being scheduled for the end of May, with a focus on getting parents into or back into work. We would really like to hear from you if you would like to showcase how your organisation supports parents or any areas you think we should cover. Please email Caroline Masundire with suggestions.

West London Working is really interested in hearing about your views on the confederation and the provider directory.

The online West London Working directory of employability services has been up and running since July 2008. The directory was designed with the guidance of frontline advisers and the website enables you to search for services to support individuals back into work. We want your views so that they can evaluate and improve it, click on this link and take part .

The confederation will also be circulating a survey in April to get your views on the confederation so far and your training and support needs for the next year or so. Both surveys will be supported by a focus group to be held in April if you are interested in taking part please contact Tony Rich.

To make sure you are registered on competefor.com. This is the London wide portal for business opportunities - a number of employment and skills contracts have been published on here over the past few weeks.