Have a great Christmas

Can you believe it is already the end of the year? As we approach Christmas and 2016 draws to a close, I want to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you for your continued hard work, commitment and support this year. Whilst we have faced a few challenges we have achieved so much together.   

Thank you for contributing towards the recent staff survey, your views and feedback is very important to us an organisation going forward. 

Have an enjoyable break and I wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas. For those of you on call and working over the Christmas period, thank you. 

Carlton

Staff survey reminder

Just a very quick blog to remind you please to take part in the staff survey which closes this coming Friday evening. Your views and feedback is very important to us so that we can learn and develop the organisation going forward.

At the moment, we have the following returns which is good but we’re keen to get even more feedback: 

(Please click image to enlarge)

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

Congratulations to one of our apprentices

It was great to see almost 2,000 of you at the recent staff engagement forums which we completed last week. I hope the new format worked for you. Carolyn and I certainly felt it was a step in the right direction in terms of your direct feedback and questions which we could then address. We’re keen to develop a more open and transparent approach to everything we do in the organisation and this was one of a number of steps we are taking to do that.

As an ex-apprentice myself, I would like to congratulate apprentice Sarah Woolley who has made it through a national selection process to volunteer overseas with Raleigh on an International Citizen Service placement to Nicaragua in March next year. 

Sarah will be staying with a local family in a rural village for 3 months where she will be working closely with the community to adopt positive hygiene and health practices, access clean water and help to empower them to manage their resources. 

The first part of her placement is a challenge to raise £800 towards the work of Raleigh, ensuring they can continue sending youth volunteers to the developing world to make a lasting difference in disadvantaged communities. Sarah is also required to complete a self-directed ‘Action at Home’ project upon her return to the UK.

Sarah says:

‘This is an opportunity of a lifetime for me but I can't do it without your support. I will be doing all sorts of things to raise money in the next few weeks, so keep your eyes open. In the meantime, any donation big or small would not only mean the world to me but also make a real difference to the lives of people in developing countries. Thank you in advance and keep a look out for more of what I’m doing!’

You can help Sarah Woolley raise money for this great cause by donating to her fundraising page www.justgiving.com/SarahWoolley97 or text ICSR55 with the amount you would like to donate to 70070. To find out more about ICS or to apply, visit www.volunteerics.org

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

An update on the staff forums

This week we started our staff engagement forums with two sessions in Trowbridge attended by over 1,000 staff. It was good to see everybody and there was a real buzz in the room. We have changed the format this year with more interaction, questions and the opportunity for delegates to contribute to some of the big questions we face as an organisation. There is also much less talking to slides from Carolyn and I which is always a good thing. It seemed to work well with lots of positive feedback during and after the sessions. The major theme this year was our employer brand and how we develop this to enable all staff to engage and contribute to our success.

From the floor, the key issues being raised so far include leadership visibility (fully agree), staff behaviour and culture aligned to our behaviours framework (needs to improve in some teams), reward and recognition (how do we do this in the public sector?), IT development (continue to develop our strong offer), internal communications (how do we improve and achieve consistency across the teams?) and our in-year and next years’ budget. 

Speaking about the budget, we outlined our current in year position. This is a projected overspend of £10m, but with plans in place to get this back to around £3.5m so far. So more work required to achieve a balanced position which is vital for setting next year’s budget plan. You will see that we have stopped all non-essential spend and recruitment where it is not aligned to front line “life and limb” service provision. If we can achieve a balanced position by year-end, the gap next year in ’17-18 with planned cuts from central government is £13m. We currently have proposals generated from all services totalling this amount. So a continued tough time in our business. 

As I said at the forums, we must not focus exclusively on budgets and their reductions although these are important for us to set a balanced budget (a legal requirement for local government, but not central government or the NHS). The bottom line is that next year we will have 98.8% of the funding we have this year, so let’s focus on how we spend that in new ways to achieve the better outcomes we seek.

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

Impressive apprenticeship figures and the importance of coaching

The Skills Funding Agency have just released the final end of year apprenticeship starts figures and it’s fantastic news for Wiltshire.

As you know our target for 2015-16 was 5,600 but we have achieved 6,440 starts, which is even higher than the target number for 2017-18, which is 6,300.

This represents a growth of 19.5% in Wiltshire.  Swindon had a growth of 7.3%. Wiltshire’s statistical neighbours on average had growth of 2.6% with some actually seeing a reduction. Compared to all the Local Education Authority’s nationally, Wiltshire had the second largest growth, only being beaten by Darlington who saw an increase of 26.1%.  

The figure is provisional and we don’t have a full breakdown yet in terms of age, sector and so on. However it is the officially published figure from the SFA but we won’t get the break downs for a while so it is hard to analyse what has made the difference this year, but clearly we are on the right track with the comprehensive programme of work, development and support for business and our colleges which we have in place. 

I am keen that we ensure these opportunities are open and available to our looked after children, so will be making this a personal goal over the next twelve months.

New coaches required. Since 2013 we have had a successful programme offering coaching to all managers and staff supporting them to achieve positive outcomes. We currently have a pool of 19 qualified coaches and due to increasing demand we are looking to offer the opportunity to five people to undertake a level 5 qualification in coaching and mentoring and become a part of the pool. 

Coaching (and mentoring) is a very important part of the role of all managers and leaders. I currently coach five junior managers and staff from across the organisation and it’s a chance for us to be part of growing the skills, capabilities and talent that the organisation needs to become more successful and to deliver its business plan. It’s also a lot of fun too as well as contributing to our own personal learning and development.

For further information please go to Coaching - the way forward in HR Direct and read the section, Becoming a coach for Wiltshire Council. All applications need to be returned to Amanda.Collyer@wiltshire.gov.uk  by Monday 31 October 2016.

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.

Looking at next years' budget

This week for me has been dominated by the budget, which always happens during the autumn term. Having said that it was punctuated by an excellent evening on Tuesday with the officers and soldiers of 21 Signal Regiment at Azimghur Barracks, North Collerne where I watched their beating retreat ceremony and we were entertained by the very impressive Band of the Brigade of Gurkhas. The army always do this so well.

Yesterday I met with all of the leaders, managers and team leads in the services which I manage to update them on the key corporate work, our performance position (strong) and budget (under pressure). We also had two excellent presentations from Sarah Butler and Laura Symons on Information Governance (a very important subject that belies the title) and John Rogers & Ian Baker on digital change and how it will impact on our services over the next few years. More on both of these anon.

Back to the budget. As at period 4 (end of July) this year we are currently projecting a potential year end overspend of around £8m (2.5% of our net budget). We have to get this under control to finish the year on balance so Carolyn and I have implemented two immediate actions. We will freeze all recruitment unless this is in areas of health and safety and protection for vulnerable people. Any other recruitment will need a conversation with us to determine the impact of the freeze. Secondly, we have reduced all service budgets by 1.5% for the remainder of the year. This achieves the balanced position and ADs are identifying the corresponding trade-offs in performance and work which will need to stop to achieve this.

Next years’ budget is just as tough. We have to reduce net expenditure by £13m to off-set the government’s reduction in our Revenue Support Grant coupled with the increased demand in key services such as children’s social care, adult social care and waste management. We have currently identify potential savings of £9m and continue to work on the gap to close. The good news is that we are 3 months ahead of where we were last year with this task and the senior management team are working very well together to tackle this.

Your ideas on how we meet these challenges are very important to us. Please share any thoughts you have in these areas directly with Carolyn and I.  

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

Return from holidays and looking forward to the future

“This week I returned from two weeks holiday – Monday morning was quite a shock. As were the scales when I jumped onto those. More weightwatchers and cycling required and in very quick order.

My third shock of the week was that I spent a full day interviewing for a new PA yesterday as after ten years working together Jane has decided to retire. Fortunately I had five excellent candidates and I was refreshed to see just how good our staff are under some tricky questioning. I shall announce who my new PA is in due course.

On Wednesday we had a good session led by the Programme Office on the subject of my last blog – Wiltshire 2021, what we need to achieve over the next 5 years and how we will deliver that. I have had a number of comments and observations from staff which we have built into our work. We are working towards sessions with Cabinet and the Associate Directors over the next few months. We will also of course engage with all of our staff on this so your thoughts about how we achieve this will be greatly received. 

To those of you about to embark on your holidays I hope you have a great time.

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"

My thoughts on what the focus should be over the next 4-5 years

This week I attended the annual local government association conference in Bournemouth with colleagues and politicians. As you can imagine, in a post Brexit referendum world there was much talk about what next for the country, local government and financial and social policy generally. There is much hysteria around the subject which I think we need to cut through and focus on doing the right things for our county and its communities. Hers’s my view on what we should focus on over the next 4-5 years. I would be very grateful for your feedback and thoughts on this.

 

These “thought starters” seek to kick start discussions around our approach to a wider programme of change and improvement across all aspects of the council. They seek to addresses the wider issues of the major challenges we face in Local Government, the outcomes we seek to achieve in the county, how we might address these and organise ourselves effectively to meet the challenges ahead.

 

All councils face similar challenges over the next 5 years or so. These are widely accepted to be focused around the following areas:

 

a) Demand management (adults, children, waste) including prevention.

b) Devolution (to us, from us) and linked to this associated economic and housing growth (the premise being that we can grow our economy and housing market faster with increased powers).

c) Health and social care integration; and other public service integration; these being in the context of resource reductions affecting all partners directly, so they face heavier pressure to withdraw services and have fewer resources to design and develop integrated services.

d) Continued significant reductions in finance (grant income, particularly removal of RSG and move to increased business rate retention). This may accelerate post-BREXIT.

 

These four challenges should shape not only our next Business Plan, but also the manifestos of the parties standing in the 2017 election. These are the “wicked issues” which politicians, at least at the local level, need to address and have a plan for. Additionally, all of these problems exceed the ability of any one organisation to resolve them – they can only be addressed effectively by acting jointly with other partner organisations in our system.  

 

Previously, this organisation has been ahead of the game in identifying the challenges it faces and bold and innovative in terms of how it meets these challenges. Examples at the organisation level would be the move to a unitary council, in-sourcing ICT, asset utilisation and disposal (now over £90m), integration of Public Health and leisure, our organisation-wide response to CSE, and at the service level there are multiple examples including Help-to-Live-at-Home, our Ofsted improvement programme, and the planning transformation programme. Peer review and external inspection evidence for all of these interventions is strong with a positive direction of travel.

 

As an organisation, we should consider the need to design, develop and launch an integrated programme of continuous improvement and change to specifically address the areas identified above. I specifically don’t use the term “transformation” which fails to acknowledge that every service and every manager is currently involved in some form of transformation. We need to see this programme of work as organisation-wide, involving everybody.

 

As leaders in the Wiltshire system, part of our role is to enable the development of the strongest system possible within the constraints we face. Some guidelines that could lead to this would be as follows:

· We, as system partners, would do less service delivery while enabling others to do more, overall increasing prevention and early intervention.  That is, we should do only the right things for the right people, agreed with citizens and with our system partners. This would mean a new citizen-provider “agreement” that re-balances citizen and state roles while also reaching agreement with partners about which people receive what help from the system.

· We as partners together with the VCS are the providers of the citizens’ system – it is their system for their purpose, not ours. (We derive our purpose from Wiltshire’s citizens, in any case.) We should be acting jointly as normal service delivery rather than focusing our collaboration primarily on “rub points”.

· We, as partners, are stewards of system assets rather than organisation assets. Increasingly we view property in this way, but could (should) extend this to people and process assets?

 

In return for citizens and communities doing more and the system partners refocusing our services, the system partners would act much more collectively, reshaping our activities (and staff roles) to maximize the assets put to the service of citizens, for direct service delivery. The return on investment in integration should result in a smaller net system workforce with minimal duplication between partners.

 

These changes would have to be done with full appreciation of the legal constraints and mandated changes required of each partner, and also with the creativity and determination to minimize their impact on collective service delivery. The same applies to the very significant cultural differences between the partners: health, for example has a markedly higher professional and cost management mentality, when compared with the council’s relatively higher client focus. Informed collective risk management will be an essential element.

 

Delivering this would be a major enterprise and hugely challenging. It would require exceptional political and executive leadership and the hearts and minds of our staff, who would have to think and operate in a very different way to the present, both during and after the changes. I believe that this would be a natural progression for many of our staff, who have shown outstanding change resilience and engagement over the last ten years.

 

Delivering these changes would, over time, evolve the Wiltshire system into something very different to its current state.

 

This agenda to accelerate and focus change on the four areas above needs an external and internal perspective; driven with pace, visibility and an identifiable brand so that all staff and partners can align with the programme, its objectives, and more importantly the outcomes.  It should be the very DNA of the organisation moving forward both internally and externally. Just like our One Council programme 2006-2009.

 

It should be focused on Wiltshire’s people (its citizens, residents, customers, clients and  businesses), Wiltshire the place (economic growth, jobs, housing enabled through long term spatial planning but acknowledging and protecting the special place that is Wiltshire) and Wiltshire Council and our partners, the organisation in terms of improved efficiency, productivity, higher performance with less money and people.

 

Outcomes need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound) and aligned to the national and local political priorities, 2017 manifesto commitments and emerging Business Plan 2017-21. They should be few in number and focused around the following:

· Customer, client, citizen, business satisfaction

· Improved, robust and reliable service performance on an appropriate business infrastructure

· Collective  ‘organisation-blind’ operations/delivery with our partners, especially at a local level

· A more effective and efficient organisation: services designed round customer purpose with people doing the right thing more of the time; more automation of delivery, lower cost, increased productivity

· A reshaped workforce: (i) lower numbers across the system with a different mix and skills; (ii) management with a more outward/outcome focus than the current inward/reduction focus

· Demand which is jointly predicted, modelled and controlled

· Commissioning which creates a stronger system for citizens, rather than individual elements within the system

· Growth across the county (new business, existing business, jobs, housing)

· Strong communities; who can look after themselves wherever possible

· Devolution (to us from Whitehall and from us to Town and  Parish Councils)

· Innovation (what do we want to be the best at and stand out for?)

· Leadership at all levels, both political and organisational

 

This is about systems leadership and I would welcome your thoughts on this thinking and approach as we develop it together over the summer.

 

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

A moment in history

“Tomorrow is one of those moments in history that I suspect we will all remember for a long time. The referendum starts at 0700 when the polls open and they close again at 2200; 370,000 people are registered to vote in the county, an increase of 20,000 since the end of 2015. This is very positive for democracy in the county as well as a good cleanse and update of our electoral register. We then start the verification and count tomorrow night at 2200 and I expect to declare a result for Wiltshire somewhere between 0430 and 0530 Friday morning. The national result is likely to be declared a little later at breakfast time in Manchester.

Whatever the result, the outcome will have a profound effect on our lives, businesses and the prosperity for the county and country. So historical indeed.

Could I just say thank you to the election team for organising tomorrow. It’s a mammoth feat of programme management, technical knowledge, logistics and overall organisation. And they have done a brilliant job as they always do.

And thank you too to you all – 850 of you working tomorrow all day at the polling stations and a further 400 working at the four count venues through the night to get us to the result. 1,250 staff involved and I am very grateful to each and every one of you. Good luck tomorrow.

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”

EU referendum and a personal best

Yesterday I met with the managers and team leaders from across all of my service areas to update them on the wider national, corporate, political and service issues facing us all. We discussed devolution, business rate retention and the changes to local government financing as well as the key policy issues that the leadership team are currently working on, such as asset transfers to town councils, as well as the year end budget position for the team and the challenges we face during this year. It was a good conversation with lots of opportunities for questions and answers.   

Attendees then broke into their service teams, facilitated by the Associate Directors, to work shop our approach to the ’17-18 budget and develop an initial list of ideas to achieve the savings we need next year. I was pleased to see the enthusiasm in all of the teams and the quality of thinking and ideas generated, many of which are radical which is always good. We now have a long shopping list of items to work up over the next few months. Thank you to all those who participated. 

We are right in the planning and preparation phase for the EU Referendum which as you’ll know is taking place on June 23. Well over 1,000 people will be working on the day and through the night, but I’m still short of poll station presiding officers and poll clerks. So I need some volunteers please. It’s a great experience to work on elections and referendums, so if you’ve not been involved before please call or email me and we’ll get you involved. Whichever way the vote goes, it will be a historical night so do please come along.

Finally, I smashed my personal best for the 10 mile time trial on Wednesday evening with a time of 25 minutes 10 seconds. A time in the 25’s was my personal goal this year so I’ve now revised that down to 24 minutes anything before the end of the season. I might need a skin suit though…

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

A big thank you

Just a very short blog today to thank all of our staff, their families and friends who were involved in the Police & Crime Commissioner election last Thursday and Friday – well over 1,000 of you across the county. Many of you worked from 6.30am on the Thursday to 4.30am Friday for which I am hugely grateful and thank you. It was a long day and with such a large and spread out county, with four counting venues it always presents some logistical challenges. As ever, these were met head on and addressed.

My special thanks to the elections team led by John Watling. The planning, training, and well thought out preparation again meant that we delivered a robust and accurate election. You’re all a pleasure to work with. 

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

Business Expo and an update from Cabinet

A fun week this week, especially yesterday when I spent most of the day in Salisbury at the Business Expo 2016 event which we ran in partnership with the City Council and others. It was good to see so many old friends from numerous organisations and to catch up on what’s happening, the challenges and opportunities ahead and how we might collaborate to ensure business, the public sector and voluntary sector work together to ensure Wiltshire is stronger and can face the challenges ahead.

The biggest business challenge I heard, and facing us right now, is skills and education including attitude to work. Many organisations told me that. We are working hard within our Economic Development team on this issue with the Local Enterprise Partnership, the schools and colleges and new initiatives such as our City Deal “Higher Futures”. This is targeted at brokering level 4 and above qualifications to military service leavers and others to prepare them for the commercial sector. It was great to meet the team on their stand in the market place.

On Tuesday Cabinet approved the asset transfer which some of us have been working on for over a year. This includes multiple buildings, land, street scene services such as shop mobility, toilets and landscape maintenance transferring to the City Council. Local councils are the right guardians for these services which they can shape and tailor to the needs of their communities with those communities. The city council will decide in July if they wish to take on this opportunity. I hope so – seize the initiative as I always say.  

To those of you who are busy in Monkton Park opening and scanning postal votes ahead of the PCC election on May 5 can I thank you. I shall pop in to see you all later this morning. And to eat your chocolate.

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

Elections and appraisals

Easter is now behind us, the evenings are lighter and I’m enjoying my bike outside now. My first time trial of the year is in two weeks and I’m hoping to get under 25 minutes for 10 miles. I’ve been training all winter so fingers crossed. I’m trying to shed another 4-5 kg just to be sure.

 

We’re now in full swing with preparations for the May 5 Police & Crime Commissioner election and the June 23 EU referendum. Thank you to all those of you who have volunteered to work on both these important events (over 1,000 staff, ex staff and others). It will be fun as always, especially as we will be counting overnight and not finishing until very late (or very early if you prefer). The elections team is doing a fantastic job preparing as always. Candidates are now nominated and we’re printing ballot papers, poll cards and the like. I shall be leading a training evening in Devizes next Monday for count supervisors and others so see some of you there.

 

This is the time of year for appraisals, although personally I prefer to have a continuous conversation throughout the year about performance, behaviours and aspirations as well as any challenges emerging. I have my formal appraisal next week with the leader so I have spent some time this morning preparing my objectives, outcomes and performance measures. I want to encourage you to do this too. Every member of staff should have a formal appraisal so if you haven’t had yours for ’15-16 please ask your manager. The new grow system on the intranet is a great tool to enable this.  

 

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

Apprenticeships

As an ex-apprentice mechanical engineer (1983-87 vintage), I was excited to hear how well six of our local government apprentices had done in the recent Apprentice Business Challenge. Kieran Jenkins, Katy Harrington, Christa Harrington, Claire Ashton, Damion Godwin and Megan Mounty all took part in the competition.


The subject they were given to argue was “why should a business take on an apprentice?”  They had to work together as a team to develop and create a presentation which they had to give to three external judges to convince them to take on an apprentice and how specifically it would benefit them and their business.


I was so pleased to hear that the team won against many other organisations – public and private sector, and that they are now off to the regional finals next Monday, 21 March. So we all wish them all the luck in the world for next week.


When our team received their feedback about how they could improve the presentation, the judges said that “they we were amazing, and that they honestly couldn’t find any areas where it could be improved”. The judges said that the winning factor, was how well the team worked together and were able to play to one another’s strengths and the passion behind what they were saying.

So overall a heartening performance and a real reminder of what an excellent way into the business an apprenticeship is. Wiltshire Council is working with its partners this year to create over 5,600 apprenticeships across the county so this opportunity is opened up to many more young people in Wiltshire.


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

Positive peer review on highways service

Last week we welcomed a team of external elected members and officers to Wiltshire from the Local Government Association to carry out a peer review of the highways service. I am a great supporter of peer reviews as they help us learn and continuously improve the services we provide for all in the county. Peer reviews are arranged by the Local Government Association and are designed to highlight strengths and identify areas for improvement and learning.

The peer review team of seven met with a wide range of partners and staff at all levels to discuss how the service is currently run and how it performs. They looked at performance information, data and evidence from right across the service to form their opinion about our delivery and prospects for the future.

The key headlines for me from the review were their findings of strong leadership, effective local decision-making and an efficient, lean service. I was concerned that we may be too lean in places and this was born out from the review. The review was very positive with the peer challenge team concluding that the council is successfully investing in the highways infrastructure, harnessing the knowledge and energy in local communities to improve outcomes and delivering Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) schemes on time and to budget. This is an important finding as we are currently delivering over £40m of highways projects for the LEP. 

The council’s key strengths identified were: the service managed the termination of the highways contract and the very challenging procurement of the new contract effectively; harnessing the knowledge and energy in local communities has led to improved outcomes and additional funding; there is a clear positive intent amongst staff and partners to ensure the service is successful; strong and capable senior political leadership which gives clear and consistent vision; the case has been successfully made for investment in the infrastructure and in an asset management approach/methodology.

Areas for development included: clarity is needed about how the wider council vision and transformation cascades to the highways and transport service; to consider the development of a performance management framework to underpin delivery of strategic outcomes; ensure IT systems support integration and workflow/ feedback; recognise and plan for the risks associated with the significant challenges faced over the coming months with mobilisation of the new contract. 

It was extremely positive to have this external assurance and affirmation that most of what we are doing in Wiltshire is working very well.

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”

A failed dry January attempt

As you may have noticed I have taken a short break from my blog since just before Christmas. But with dry January out of the way (I lasted three full days), spring in sight (only another two weeks) and a very tricky budget almost set for ’16-17 I thought I’d better get writing again.

Despite not taking part in dry January after the 4th I have managed to put in a serious block of training for this years’ time trial season which opens in April and runs through to the end of August. I’m currently putting in over 100 miles a week in short 30 min bursts of 45km/h minimum. I have absolutely no idea whether this is helpful to my performance later in the year but it makes me feel quite good.

As you will have noticed there has been a lot of chatter about the budget settlement for local government over the last 6 weeks or so. It started immediately before Christmas when we were told that we would have an additional £4m removed from our funding. This is very late notice for such a large change but we worked through the holiday period to identify options of how we could deliver that challenge. This week on the same day Cabinet recommended their budget to Council we learned that we would be getting a transitional grant of £3m for 2 years to smooth the process of having all of our revenue support grant (RSG) removed before 2019-20. So you win some and then you lose some, but the impact is a reduction again. Council will set the budget at its meeting on February 23 and will consider a council tax rise of 2% and an additional social care levy of a further 2% (a 4% rise in total).

It will be good to get this protracted process behind us so that we can get on with delivery of important services to our citizens, clients, customers and consumers across Wiltshire.

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