Friday, 22 April 2016

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

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