Public Affairs: The Week in Lobbying

Laurence Diment joins from being external affairs assistant at the Federation of Master Builders, while Chris Mansell was previously a comms intern at the Policy Exchange. They have been appointed to cope with an expanding client base.

Irena Bednarich has been promoted to the role of director of public policy in the EMEA region and head of EU public affairs at Hewlett-Packard, from her previous role as government affairs manager. She has worked at Hewlett-Packard since 2005.

The Association of Convenience Stores, the lobby group for 33,500 local shops, has pledged to fight government proposals to limit the number of off-licences in an area.

The plans, outlined in the Alcohol Strategy, could allow councils to refuse licence applications on the basis that an area already has enough alcohol outlets.

Zetter's Political Services has unveiled the latest version of Zetter's Online - a stakeholder engagement toolkit hosted on the Vuelio platform, which is already used by more than 300 public and private sector comms departments.