Friday 1 October 2010

I attended the inaugural staff awards in Salisbury on Monday night. The City Hall looked great and the main hall looked just like the Oscars - some very impressive organisation by the comms team and the City Hall staff. The awards were brilliant, every nominee, short listed entry and winner were inspirational in their commitment, energy and focus on our customers and communities. I felt quite humbled by the experience. It would be wrong of me to pick out any winners to mention, so well done to you all!

Yesterday we held the Audit Committee where the prime business was to approve the closure of the accounts for the first year of Wiltshire Council. This went smoothly, with only three major recommendation from our external auditors in terms of how we should improve our business. I was extremely pleased with this performance and must thank Matthew Tiller and Steve Memmott and their respective teams for this. Well done guys.


As you may know Deborah Farrow has decided to move on to a new career in the private sector. I want to thank Deborah for her outstanding leadership, tenacity, political management skill and knowledge of systems thinking which have had such a profound impact on the organisation in the three years that she has been with us. I knew we wouldn't keep her forever - good people always move on - so we shouldn't be surprised by this announcement.
In consultation with the Portfolio Holder for ICT, I don't plan to replace Deborah at service director level because of the need to reduce managers by around 240 posts across the organisation - 50 in DOR by March. I will be changing my structure, like all corporate directors from next April and will move the ICT and other responsibilities to another service director.
To ensure the focus and leadership required to deliver all that we have to in ICT, I am expanding Mark Stone's role to become programme director ICT, information management and work place transformation. There are clear synergies between these areas of work. These arrangements will be in place for up to 18 months to ensure continuity during a period of substantial change to the business.
Thanks for reading and speak again next week

Carlton