Friday 4 September 2009

This week has had the feel of a new term about it. The holidays are over and most people are back at work for Christmas term!

I'm feeling a little jaded this morning as some of us were working at the Southwick By-election last night. Caroline Rudland and the elections team did a great job (as always). My thanks go to all those who worked so hard last night. We received the ballot boxes by 10.30pm and had them verified and counted by around 11.40pm. As deputy returning officer I was then able to announce the results. Francis Moreland, an Independent candidate won, so congratulations to him. I always love working on elections as there is a real buzz of excitement. And of course the democratic process is so important to us working for a council. The next big election task will be the general election - with smart money currently on a May 6 date - so do please volunteer to get involved.

I chaired the board for the Work Place Transformation Programme this week. We reviewed where we are with the Bourne Hill build in Salisbury (on time and slightly under budget - a great performance by the property team) and also the follow-on phases for Trowbridge, Devizes and Chippenham. There are several communications events planned over the next couple of months so do please try and get along to whichever session covers your hub area. The Salisbury events are next week, Monday 7th and Wednesday 9th.

I met with the SAP shared services team this week to review where we are with the implementation, including budget monitoring, bank reconciliation, VAT, accounts receivable and the procurement issues; purchase order and invoice payment back log in some services. We're developing work plans to address these issues quickly and will communicate progress regularly. It's worth reflecting that almost all of the major programmes of this nature that I have experience of have these sort of issues after launch and the task for us as a team now is to get these understood and resolved quickly for our customers.

Talk again next week.

Carlton