The end of January already!

I can’t believe it’s almost the end of January – where have the last four weeks gone?

As is usual for this time of year, the last four weeks have been dominated by preparing the budget for 2014-15. As you will all know we face some considerable challenges; developing and improving services to our communities, citizens and businesses whilst delivering significant savings to our tax payers. This year’s budget has probably been the most difficult yet to set. The budget papers published yesterday for scrutiny recommend that members approve around £18million to be redirected and invested in front line business plan priority areas. These areas include increasing expenditure on highway repairs and maintenance, building more homes, continuing our investment of an additional £1m in economic development, increased expenditure on adult care for the elderly and vulnerable and children’s safeguarding services. To afford this, savings of £25 million are recommended for next year from across all service areas. Our funding from central government has now been cut by over 32% since 2010. For the fifth year in a row members are considering no rise in council tax. All of these decisions will be taken by Council at its February 25 meeting.

My thanks to the whole finance team and the service areas who have worked so hard to get us to a point where we have a balanced budget to recommend to elected members.

Some good news for our excellent HR function. They have been short listed for the HR Distinction Awards - the HR Distinction Awards celebrate the outstanding contribution that innovatively designed and superbly executed HR strategies make to business performance and the bottom line. Being nominated as a finalist and winning an award affirms to our employees, colleagues, elected members and, industry peers that Wiltshire Council and our team is delivering best practice HR management. For information we are a finalist at next week's international awards in Birmingham under the category of Distinction in Change Management.

See website for further information - www.hrdistinctionawards.com

All the best to the HR team for next week.

Speak again soon. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.

Carlton