Thursday, February 25

This week the council approved its budget for 2010-11. It was a long meeting on Thursday but the budget went through quite smoothly. Over £24 million of savings were identified, none of which impact on front line services. The second year business plan commitments for One Council and BMP were exceeded again, and we also delivered over £8 million of savings from procurement activity. The Finance teams and all of the departments have done a great job in preparing the budget.

I attended a refresher of my election training on Wednesday in Andover. I shall be the Assistant Deputy Returning Officer for the Wiltshire South West constituency at the forthcoming parliamentary election, so I needed to brush up on my election legal and process knowledge. It was a great day, although always slightly scary when you realise what can go wrong!

Just a reminder that we are having our Team Day next week, March 3rd. There are over 600 people already signed up but I'm sure we have one or two place left if any are required.

I am in London on Friday meeting up with directors from five other unitaries. We will be exchanging information and ideas about some of the big issues we all face over the coming months. Money and the election will feature highly! It's a good opportunity to check out what others think, and also to test out some of my ideas on them before we develop more formal proposals.

By the way, Avatar was brilliant - I'm a softie for a love story...

See you next week at our Team Day.

Carlton