Friday 30 September

This week has been packed! On Monday we held our Autumn Team Day for all staff in the department. We use these twice yearly events to review where we are including what we’ve achieved and learned together; assess the issues we face at the moment, and describe and agree the priorities for the next six months. There has been a lot going on in the organisation over the past few months so it was important to get the the whole team together. We try to inject a little fun into the presentations and exercises as well as addressing the business issues that it is important to discuss. Everybody seemed to enjoy the day and we have had some really positive feedback from staff on the importance of these events.

Wednesday was the Audit Committee where members approved the final accounts for 2010-11. These were unqualified and finance also had to comply with the new international standards for accounting reporting. They have done a fantastic job achieving these outcomes this year. Well done to the team.

On Thursday, Cabinet and CLT met with their counterparts from Buckinghamshire CC. The purpose was to exchange information and views on what we’re both doing and to pick up ideas from each other in terms of how we might develop our thinking and delivery in different ways. The Bucks transformation programme is very similar to ours and I was interested to hear how they are using SAP to automate their performance appraisal process on line for all employees. The Bucks way of commissioning their economic development work from a board comprising many private sector business partners was innovative too. We’ll be exploring how we might achieve some of the benefits that they are seeing from this approach.

Also published this week is the report to Cabinet on the senior management restructure. Cabinet will make a decision on this next week, October 6. This is well worth a read and can be found at the link below. I think this is an excellent report; innovative, bold and deliverable in my opinion and sets us up very well for the next few years as we deliver our business plan together.

Thanks for reading and we’ll catch up again next week.

For daily updates, views and opinions, you can now follow me on Twitter, @drcarltonbrand

Have a good weekend in the sun.

Carlton