It’s been a couple of weeks since my last blog, my apologies for this.
It’s been a whirlwind of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) meetings where we are
putting together bids for the county of up to £25m to deliver more high value
jobs and houses across the county. We’re also working on the detailed project
plans to deliver the schemes approved in the first round of our growing places
funding that was announced in the summer. These schemes include Chippenham
station and a number of road schemes across the county. Busy times for the
economic development team.
I was in London
late last week with other unitary directors and chief execs sharing our
learning around our LEP, the budget where we need to identify £30m of savings
for ’15-16, our business plan objectives and the wider transformation programme. It
was reassuring for me to hear that we are up there with the best in terms of
what we are delivering in the county, although the budget task is very
difficult.
The autumn staff
forum events start next week and I encourage you all to attend these. They are
an important event for us all to share with each other what we are facing, how
we will collectively tackle those challenges and most importantly to answer the
questions that you will have for us all.
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
Carlton
