Friday 5 November

It's been a week or two since I last blogged as I was out for most of last week spending half term with my family. Lots of Scalextric!

It's been busy since the announcement of the Comprehensive Spending Review funding reductions. I seem to have spent most of my time talking with senior colleagues about how we will approach the task and exploring alternative ways of achieving the reductions. I am missing spending time with the teams in the hubs as a result. Wiltshire doesn't know precisely what grant it will receive next year and won't know until mid December at the earliest so it still feels like we have too many unknowns. Having said that we are working on plans for a 12% reduction in service budgets next year as a likely scenario for the budget setting process. This will be tough to achieve as evidenced by the start of the formal management review process this week. You will have also seen further proposals that are being discussed with the unions. We can explore these together more fully at the Team Day later this month.

The DOR Team Day is set for November 17 and I just wanted to remind everybody to sign up for either the morning or afternoon session. The venue is Devizes this time as the Civic Hall in Trowbridge is closed for refurbishment. I hope to see as many of you there as can make it.

Finally there seems to be a rumour circulating amongst some staff that I am leaving the organisation. Wishful thinking on somebody's part I think, as I have no plans to leave. If I find the culprit...

Thanks for reading. Talk again next week.

Carlton