Friday 10 February 2012

A snowy start to the day today so I hope you’ve all had safe journeys to work or are using the home working ICT that most of us now have. I’m typing this at my kitchen table as I contemplate going outside to scrape the snow and drive to Trowbridge.

Assuming I get to Trowbridge I’m meeting about 170 staff from our planning service this morning. We’re launching the transformation programme for that service today with an interactive event for all staff in the service to shape and influence the work programme for the year. This is a major priority for me this year as planning is such an important part of delivering our vision for more resilient communities, and ensuring we attract more jobs into the county and keep the ones we have during what is a difficult economic climate.

Yesterday we had the joint scrutiny meeting of the proposed 2012-13 budget. It was a lively meeting with some great questions from members as they prepared themselves for the full debate on the budget at Council on 28 February. The finance and services teams have done a great job once again to prepare this in such a readable and accessible format. Well done all.

Earlier in the week I held my monthly managers meetings with around 100 managers from the teams I lead. We shared some learning around the forthcoming planning transformation programme, devolving service decision making to communities (highways have done a great job on this), the overall transformation programme including campuses and a quick session from me on communication and how we might understand and improve it. This last item was raised by many staff in the recent forums we held.

I now have to write a quick letter to the Local Government Chronicle about councils with no Chief Executive. They really don’t seem to understand how it all works so I’ll have another try...

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Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.

Carlton