Throughout the team last Friday, we held a host of events to raise money for Children in Need. I'm delighted to say that we raised a whopping £2,362.86p for the charity. This is a brilliant performance by the whole team and especially those that gave up their time and much effort to bake cakes, staff the stalls and generally get involved with all the doing. Well done to all.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Monkton Park with the Building Control team. It was a good opportunity for me to find out what they do and generally learn a lot more about their role. We also spent some time talking about the forthcoming harmonisation programme - the work to harmonise the pay and terms and conditions of all our staff. There are lots of rumours about this subject and what it may mean for individuals. I was able to stress that no decisions have been made yet, but that Cabinet this week have agreed the work plan to negotiate a collective agreement with the trade unions. More on this subject as the plans are developed.
This week has seen more staff engagement presentations for the Workplace Transformation Programme - this week in Trowbridge for about 300 plus staff. These sessions are going well and we are identifying many issues and worries that staff are expressing that we can then build into the programme.
I am in London tomorrow to meet with five other Corporate Directors from unitaries across the country. We will be sharing our collective learning and experiences on subjects such as harmonisation, inspection, culture change, programme management and leadership. These sessions really get me thinking and are always a source of new ideas to bring to our organisation.
Speak again next week. Have a great weekend.
Carlton
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Friday, 20 November 2009
Friday 20 November 2009
A very short blog today. Today is Children in Need day and across the whole of Resources in all of the hubs we are holding a huge number of events for our team to be involved with raising money for this exceptional cause - supporting children and young people in our local communities and our wider communities in other countries.
Many many people throughout the team have been involved in preparing for today but I must say thank you to Jacqui White for suggesting we all do something to support the cause. And also to Shirley Thompson Evans. Shirley works in the Shared Service Team Domiciliary Care Finance Team. She has approached numerous department stores, organisations and businesses for raffle prizes (including Harrods who donated a huge teddy). And we have a signed photo of Simon Cowell, who ever he is!
So please visit the numerous cake stalls and have your fill. Buy lots of raffle tickets to win some super prizes. Take part in the competitions on offer and finally if you want a real laugh, go and pay to watch Ian Winterbottom having his legs waxed for the charity!
Take care and have a good weekend.
Carlton
Many many people throughout the team have been involved in preparing for today but I must say thank you to Jacqui White for suggesting we all do something to support the cause. And also to Shirley Thompson Evans. Shirley works in the Shared Service Team Domiciliary Care Finance Team. She has approached numerous department stores, organisations and businesses for raffle prizes (including Harrods who donated a huge teddy). And we have a signed photo of Simon Cowell, who ever he is!
So please visit the numerous cake stalls and have your fill. Buy lots of raffle tickets to win some super prizes. Take part in the competitions on offer and finally if you want a real laugh, go and pay to watch Ian Winterbottom having his legs waxed for the charity!
Take care and have a good weekend.
Carlton
Friday, 13 November 2009
Friday 13 November 2009
I visited the Browfort hub on Monday to lead the Team Wire discussion. We talked about the "wicked" issues that are important to everybody at the moment, including pay harmonisation - what's happening and when?, the new chief executive - what's he like?, the budget - what's the current situation?, plans for work place transformation, culture - the values and behaviours in the organisation, ICT - what's working and what's not?, and the management restructure - why now? We had a good conversation for 90 minutes on these issues and I encourage all staff to do the same at their team meetings. These things are important and we must continually address them - to explain to all what's happening and why?
Tuesday was full council. The key business included approval of changes to member allowances, approval of the Core Strategy for the south (this identifies where the housing and business development will happen over the next 20 years), ratification of the appointment of the new Chief Executive, and a decision to include sprinklers into all new build schools. You can see from this the diversity of decisions that elected members take which affect our customers, communities and our organisation.
Today I am with the Department of Children and Education all day. We are looking at the budget situation over the next 4-5 years and will be developing outline commissioning plans for key services to improve service performance for our clients and customers whilst reducing cost at the same day. It will be a challenging, but fun day.
Thanks for reading and talk again next week. The Steam Museum was excellent by the way. My eight year old is a budding loco. driver which makes me so proud!
Carlton
Tuesday was full council. The key business included approval of changes to member allowances, approval of the Core Strategy for the south (this identifies where the housing and business development will happen over the next 20 years), ratification of the appointment of the new Chief Executive, and a decision to include sprinklers into all new build schools. You can see from this the diversity of decisions that elected members take which affect our customers, communities and our organisation.
Today I am with the Department of Children and Education all day. We are looking at the budget situation over the next 4-5 years and will be developing outline commissioning plans for key services to improve service performance for our clients and customers whilst reducing cost at the same day. It will be a challenging, but fun day.
Thanks for reading and talk again next week. The Steam Museum was excellent by the way. My eight year old is a budding loco. driver which makes me so proud!
Carlton
Friday, 6 November 2009
Friday 6 November 2009
Councillors this week have selected the next chief executive - Andrew Kerr who is currently the CEO at North Tyneside Council. This is subject to approval at full council next week. With the other corporate directors, I had the pleasure of talking with Andrew as part of the selection process. He is very inspirational and showed a real depth of knowledge about the issues we face in Wiltshire and the challenges that a new unitary organisation faces. North Tyneside is a unitary and has gone from strength to strength over the last few years. Andrew will be joining us in around three months time.
We held an afternoon at Monkton Park on Monday to brief around 100 staff about the Work Place Transformation Programme. It was a lively session with some great questions about how the change will affect staff generally and lots of questions specifically about ICT, car parking, hot desking, etc. Do please visit the web site for a full summary of the FAQs and other events that are coming up with respect to this important programme.
I was in London yesterday to attend the first Public Service Leadership conference. Attendees were from all elements of the public sector; the armed forces, civil service, local government, the NHS, higher education, police, probation and many others. We were addressed by Peter Housden, Permanent Secretary to the department of Communities & Local Government (CLG). He outlined some of the challenges ahead (including not surprisingly reducing expenditure) but also went on to talk about Total Place and the drive to join up currently separate public services into what he called a whole system approach for consumers. We are well placed in Wiltshire for this agenda. Our systems thinking approach to service redesign, which has delivered so well in adult care, highways as well as revenues and benefits and many others is all about a whole systems approach. We can expand this with our partners to tackle some of the difficult cross-cutting service issues that we jointly face.
Today I shall be with the service directors for a day to plan out the next five years for the department. We won't finish this in a day but we want to start to identify the direction that many of our services need to take to meet our customers' requirements, the councils corporate plan, our medium term financial plan and the forthcoming changes in central government policy and funding. It will be very interesting and I'll share this with you when we have it developed sufficiently.
Thanks for reading and catch up again next week. Have a great weekend - I'm off to the Swindon Steam Museum, somewhere I've been meaning to go for nearly three years since arriving in Wiltshire!
Carlton
We held an afternoon at Monkton Park on Monday to brief around 100 staff about the Work Place Transformation Programme. It was a lively session with some great questions about how the change will affect staff generally and lots of questions specifically about ICT, car parking, hot desking, etc. Do please visit the web site for a full summary of the FAQs and other events that are coming up with respect to this important programme.
I was in London yesterday to attend the first Public Service Leadership conference. Attendees were from all elements of the public sector; the armed forces, civil service, local government, the NHS, higher education, police, probation and many others. We were addressed by Peter Housden, Permanent Secretary to the department of Communities & Local Government (CLG). He outlined some of the challenges ahead (including not surprisingly reducing expenditure) but also went on to talk about Total Place and the drive to join up currently separate public services into what he called a whole system approach for consumers. We are well placed in Wiltshire for this agenda. Our systems thinking approach to service redesign, which has delivered so well in adult care, highways as well as revenues and benefits and many others is all about a whole systems approach. We can expand this with our partners to tackle some of the difficult cross-cutting service issues that we jointly face.
Today I shall be with the service directors for a day to plan out the next five years for the department. We won't finish this in a day but we want to start to identify the direction that many of our services need to take to meet our customers' requirements, the councils corporate plan, our medium term financial plan and the forthcoming changes in central government policy and funding. It will be very interesting and I'll share this with you when we have it developed sufficiently.
Thanks for reading and catch up again next week. Have a great weekend - I'm off to the Swindon Steam Museum, somewhere I've been meaning to go for nearly three years since arriving in Wiltshire!
Carlton
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