Friday 8 January 2010

Happy New Year. I hope that everybody had a good Christmas break and are back at work a little more relaxed than we finished last year. I had swine flu for the first half of the Christmas period which was an experience...

2010 has started with the weather dominating our business this week. I spent some time with the Customer Care team yesterday understanding our plans to cope with the number of calls coming into the business, and earlier in the week I visited Dave Small and his team at the Middlefield Learning Disability Centre in Chippenham. This is the centre that we plan to co-locate into the Chippenham leisure centre later this year. I have to say that I'm always blown away by the professionalism, tenacity and overall customer focus of our teams and staff. Both teams really bring to life the vision and ambition that we have for this new council. I know that with people like this on our side, we can achieve everything we need to this year and in the future.

January is always the time when we are finalising the budget for the next financial year. This years process has been the smoothest that I have known here in Wiltshire -well done Finance - and I'm pleased to report that we have a balanced budget which we will be reviewing with the Executive during the next few weeks. This is a great position to be in given the uncertainty nationally that we all hear and read about most days.

Thanks for reading and talk again next week.

Carlton