The first step is to check whether there are any other groups in your area. There may be a local group that already exists in your area, but that just needs more activists in your town or your part of the city to become more active in your local area.

If that is the case, get in contact with them and discuss ways in which you might be able to help them expand their campaigns in your local area.

Alternatively, there may not be a group which covers your area but there may be an established one that covers a neighbouring area.

If there is a group in a neighbouring area then get in contact with them, chat about how they operate, maybe go along with them to a planning meeting or a local campaign day, to get a feel for what it's like to be part of a local group.

However, there are some areas of the country that unfortunately don't have any local groups operating there. If that is the case for your local area, then could you be the person to get something going?

At the European Movement UK, we have a team that is dedicated to supporting branches and local groups, ensuring that they have everything that they need to deliver effective local campaigns.

We can also help to guide you through the process of setting up a new group in your area, and answer any questions that you may have about the movement.

The team comes from a campaigning background, including in party politics and pro-European grassroots campaigning, with members of the team having also been Chairs of their local group.

You can contact us by emailing [email protected] and we will be happy to help you, or alternatively please complete the form at the bottom of this page and we will be in touch.

The next step is to organise a welcome meeting in your local area, to encourage more people to get involved with forming a new group in your local area.

Once you have spoken to the European Movement team, and decided that you would like to set up a new group, pick a time and a place for a welcome meeting. This can be something simple like meeting in a local coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon - it doesn't need to be anything complicated.

The European Movement team can help to signpost people to your meeting by contacting members and supporters in your area, and invite them to come along.

This meeting is your chance to meet like-minded people in your area, who share a passion for pro-European campaigning, and to get the ball rolling on the process to formally getting the group set up. You can discuss your shared passions, what you would like to see from a new campaign group, and get the ball rolling by forming a leadership team with those who are interested.

Not yet ready for a meeting in person? No problem - we can also invite people to contact you via e-mail if they are interested in hearing more, and you can then set up a welcome meeting once a few people are on board.

If you go down this route, we recommend setting up another e-mail address just for this purpose that can be used to coordinate group activity. For example, EMTownsville@gmail.com if you lived in a place called Townsville.

Once you find some like-minded people who share your passion for getting a group set up in your area, it's time to decide on a few key details of your group.

For example what area will your group cover? If you are from a large town or city then it may be simple, in that you would just cover that town and the surrounding area. But if you come from an area with lots of small towns which doesn't currently have a group then you may wish to cover that part of the county.

After you decide on the area that you want to cover, what about a group name? Most groups use one of two models - for example, if you were based in Townsville, you could either call yourself European Movement Townsville or Townsville for Europe. But it's up to you.

You should also decide amongst yourselves who will take on various roles. The most important role to fill is that of Chair, who will lead the group, but if you have lots of people who want to help you then you may want to fill roles such as Vice Chair, Secretary, Membership Officer, Campaigns Officer, or anything else that you can think of. The choice is yours!

At this point, you're probably eager to get campaigning. You can start campaigning straight away, and we'll be happy to help you get that going, but there are a few more steps to take to fully integrate your new group into the European Movement network in order to take advantage of the full range of support and resources that we are able to offer local groups.

There are a few formalities that you will need to go through to fully join the European Movement's Local Group Network, to take advantage of all of the resources and support that the European Movement makes available to groups.

The first is completing an affiliation agreement with the European Movement UK. This is just a short document that tells us you would like to join our network which outlines the responsibilities of an affiliated group and the support that we are able to give. It's your gateway to being part of a nationwide family of local groups.

Once this is complete, you'll need to give us all of the information that we need to get you set up on the groups map on the website and to give you access to all of our resources. This information includes contact details of the Chair and other officers, which parts of the country you cover, any social media profiles that you have set up, and other things like this.

Further down the line you will need to formally set up a constitution for the group, which helps to set out the rules and procedures for your group - such as elections to roles, AGMs, membership etc. This may sound scary but it isn't - we have model constitutions that you can work from, and we will be there to help you get everything sorted.

To be formally approved as a local European Movement branch your request for affiliation will go to our National Council, the democratically elected body which steers our movement, and they will formally accept you into the movement. This is just a formality, but you can still campaign and form links in your local community while the approval process is ongoing.

The steps described above are just a summary, and an indication of the key steps in the process to setting up a group. Once you get in contact with us we will guide you through the whole process, to help you set up an active and effective local campaign group.