Happy new year to you all. I hope you had a
good break over the Christmas period and managed to avoid the colds, flu and
chest infections that most people seem to have got. Me included.
2015 is going to be an interesting year. The
general election campaign kicked off immediately on January 2 with the major
parties making the NHS A&E capacity issues, bed blocking and economic
recovery the early issues to discuss. And today we have the televised leaders’
debate issue all over the press from a perspective of will it or won’t it
happen? Only another four months to go. Our role however is to run a fair and
accurate election and our team here in the council is working on that. Plans
are progressing well.
The more interesting aspect of the election for me
is what will happen on May 8 – the day after. It’s clear that there are further
cuts in public sector funding to come which could amount to a further 40% for
us. This will be challenging and tricky to deliver and will require us to
continue to think differently about the purpose or local government and how it
goes about delivering the key aspects of its vision and objectives. We will
need to become more of a facilitator and enabler for others to deliver what our
communities need and we will need to redesign our direct service provision to
be high performing within the financial constraints that we have. We have a
strong track record here.
This will not be easy but we must remain positive
and up for the challenge. We have great staff, management and elected members
all with good ideas about how we can achieve this. Fortune favours the brave,
and we must remember that. Bold, innovative policy developed from an in depth
knowledge of our communities and customers and delivered with attention to
detail. The future is ours to seize in 2015.
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
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