Encouraging a culture of good information management

Hello,

As an organisation, we have to care about the security of our information. There are any number of legal reasons to do this, but in its simplest form, it comes down to being the guardians of the information we keep and holding the trust of both the public, our staff and the organisations and individuals that we do business with.

In my role as Senior Information Risk Officer (SIRO), I am responsible for leading and encouraging a culture of good information management, owning the overall information risk policy and to understand where the lessons can be learned when there are information incidents. The current Information Governance agenda is doing much to drive that message out to everyone but I would like to highlight a key issue for everyone.

In recent weeks, there have been a number of data incidents where information has been shared and stored inappropriately.  It is everybody’s responsibility to ensure that they take steps to ensure that the information they are working with or sharing is being done in a secure way. 
Sensitive documents and personal data should be only be stored on drives where access is restricted to the appropriate people and should never be stored on the hard drives in laptops.

Emails are a method of communication that has become common place in a 21st century working environment.  Onward transmission of emails has brought about a complacency in terms of assuming that everything contained within that email thread needs to be shared. This is usually not the case.

It is therefore good working practice to remember the following:

• If you are contacting someone for the first time, especially if it is outside of our organisation, send a test message to establish you have the right person and refrain from sending or saying anything confidential until you have ensured you have the right person.
• Use council email accounts only for work-related activities.
• If you are forwarding emails, check through to see if there is any personal information contained within the thread and, if there is, only include it if the recipient should have that information.
• If you are replying to an email, do not automatically “reply to all”. Consider who has been sent or cc’d into the message and whether the information needs to be shared with all those included.
• If you are in regular contact with an external agency or person, ensure there is an established data sharing agreement in place.
• Do not email any council data, whether sensitive or not to a personal email address
• Do not open emails from unknown external senders or click on suspicious links within emails.

If you want any further information or assistance please email informationgovernance@wiltshire.gov.uk 

Thanks for your help out on this important topic.

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

Great to see our #EPIC staff grow together

This week saw the launch of #EPIC impressions. The staff engagement group #EPIC launched ‘impressions’, a new way of recognising staff for a job well done. Every impression left in GROW is emailed to line managers and reported back as part of the appraisal process to ensure maximum visibility. More than 400 impressions were left within the first two days this week, with all teams across the council involved. The initiative is one of a number of positive changes being introduced by the #EPIC group which was set up following feedback at last year’s staff engagement forums and in the staff survey which followed. I enjoyed using our GROW system this week to say thank you to a number of staff.

Also this week has seen us supporting Private Fostering Week, which aims to reduce the number of children in un-notified private fostering arrangements. Along with media work, a stand in the Atrium helped to raise awareness, information was also sent to schools and churches to share with their communities.

Some good news about adoption in the county. The number of children in care being placed with adoption families has risen, and it has taken less time to place them. The time between receiving court authority to place a child and finding a match was 158 days in Wiltshire from 2013-2016; the national average was 226 days. Well done to Martin Davis, head of placement services, and his team.

For those of you about to embark on your holidays, have a great time and get some well-deserved rest.

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 long day – #General Election 2017

Today is a long day for many of us – more than 28 hours for some, and I just wanted to say good luck and thank you for your support today, tonight and tomorrow. More than 1,000 of you are working today on the election and many others are covering the day job to continue to deliver our services. 

My special thanks to the election team, customer services, communications and the community engagement managers whom have all worked tirelessly for weeks to make today go well and enable democracy to thrive 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.

Carlton

A huge thank you to all that delivered the election

I’ll start by saying a massive thank you to the Elections team, Customer Services team and everybody who helped on the local election last week. It was a big effort and we delivered the election well. The Wiltshire local election (405 elections on the same day) is one of, if not the largest in the country. It was a long day, and some of us didn’t finish until well after 2am on the Friday. And then a further 12 hours verifying and counting during Friday. Thank you all so much for your efforts. This week we started the induction programme for all elected members which is going well.

On Tuesday I introduced one of a series of staff workshops being held to mark Mental Health Awareness Week. I’m sure many of you will have seen the recent media coverage of Princes William and Harry talking about their own mental health experiences. The workshops and the other campaign material which you may have seen has encouraged all of us to challenge the negative  connotations often applied to mental health sufferers. Everyone, regardless of age, gender or post,  is susceptible to periods of poor mental health, just as we all are to poor physical health, and we need to treat the prevention and treatment of both equally. 

The Corporate Leadership Team this week signed a pledge to end any mental health discrimination in the workplace. Having poor mental health will not be viewed as a personal weakness; will not adversely affect your job security or your career opportunity; and will not be treated any less supportively than any form of poor physical health. I’m delighted that already well over 400 members of staff have also made a personal pledge to help tackle the stigma. You can add your name to the pledge here.

We can all take some general steps towards positive mental health by adopting some simple rules at work. Try to leave work on time when you can; always make sure you take a proper lunch or rest break; and most importantly try to make sure you find the time to fit in those things important to you outside of work. I try not to check or worry about non-urgent work matters outside of working hours and I hope you don’t feel you need to either. Frankly, I’d rather be out on my bike, it’s my own personal favourite stress-busting technique! 

We’re supporting International Coaching Week with a series of Coaching Information Events at the 3 main hubs. Some of our amazing coaches will be on hand to explain the many benefits of 1 to 1 coaching, which is available to all staff and managers. These informal, drop-by sessions are an excellent opportunity to talk to a coach and discover how coaching can support your personal development in so many areas like confidence-building, communication, improving working relationships, coping with change, decision-making, objective-setting, leadership, resilience and much more. If you’re unable to attend an information event, but would like to find out more about being coached, contact amanda.collyer@wiltshire.gov.uk

Coaching Information Events: drop in or drop by

Date	Time	Where	Site
17 May	9:30am - 3:30pm	Atrium	County Hall
18 May	9:30am - 3:30pm	Atrium	County Hall
17 May	2pm - 3pm	Cockerell room	Bourne Hill
19 May	10am - 11am	Langley room	Monkton Park

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

Less than a week to go

This time next week we will be counting the votes in the four counting centres across the county. First unitary results should start to be announced at around noon with the final results known by around 3pm. You’ll be able to follow these on the web, our twitter account or BBC Wiltshire. Then we’ll move onto the town and parish counting and results which should all be declared by around 5pm. All very exciting, if like me you’re a bit of an election junky. With the simultaneous announcement of the General Election, the election team and many other staff are working flat out. Long 12 hour plus days, most weekends and the bank holidays too. Tomorrow we’re packing the ballot boxes for collection by the presiding officers and poll clerks next week. I would like to thank you all for your commitment and selflessness in supporting this important work. 

In preparation for the Monday following the election, Carolyn and I have alternative draft business plans written (depending on who wins the election) for the new executive. This is together with a full programme of cabinet decisions and supporting papers that need to be taken to continue our work, development of the organisation and the services it delivers along with the major policy decisions that need to be taken affecting the county. The next four years are going to be very challenging for local government across the country but we’re well positioned to continue our journey of high performance service delivery, innovation, change and focusing on the priorities of the individuals, families, communities and businesses across Wiltshire.

Now back to the election… 33,000 postal votes received, opened, scanned and processed so far and they’re coming in at a rate of around 3,500 per day.

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

Some well deserved thank yous and congratulations

Are you a manager with a passion for developing staff? You may have seen this in a recent Managers Wire. I fully support and actively encourage our senior leaders to provide mentoring for our less experienced managers and recognise the enormous benefits that this can bring for both parties. As Ralph Nader said, “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders not more followers”. Our job is to grown and nurture leadership and management at all levels throughout our organisation. If you feel you can develop our leaders of tomorrow please apply to become a mentor.

The next mentor development session is taking place on Friday 19 May, from  9.00 am-1.00 pm in the Lacock room, County Hall. If you are interested in finding out more, and how to apply, details can be found here Mentoring Guidance for Mentors Mentoring Guidance for Mentors 124kb  or you can email amanda.collyer@wiltshire.gov.uk for further information.

Now for some well-deserved thank yous and congratulations.

HR & OD have been shortlisted for a number of external awards. The annual PPMA (Public Service People Managers Association) awards, which recognise excellence in people management, will take place in Bristol on 27 April during the PPMA annual conference, and the council’s team have been shortlisted as finalist in three of these awards. These are:

•       The role of HR in innovation
•       Transforming the working environment
•       Sustainable transformation

Many congratulations to Jo Pitt and her team for this achievement. They were up against some stiff national competition and have done extremely well to be shortlisted and I am sure you will all join me in wishing them the best of luck at the awards in April.

Registration Service - The Registration Service, led by Alison Manning underwent an audit conducted by the General Register Office for England and Wales from 16 to 24 March inclusive.  The final report has been received which states that the district has now achieved a high level of security around GRO certificate stock and registration records, this is a credit to all staff so very well done.

Award Winning Single View - The Council “Single View” programme, led by Ian Baker and Steve Vercella has just been awarded the National IESE (Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise) award for innovation (http://www.iese.org.uk/events/iese-awards-2017). Special thanks must also go to Paul Mills, Lisa McKeigue and Tamara Smith from the programme office for their contributions. The Single View Programme has been working to deliver information across organisational boundaries in the public sector to increase efficiency and decision making and improve outcomes for the public in Wiltshire. One of the early deliverables was the provision of care information to medical General Practitioners surgeries to improve the information they have on particular patients.

An important part of this programme was the technology to access and share the data which was developed by the Development Team within IT. Special thanks and congratulations go to Chris Sercombe, Chris Beavan and Samyukta Billakurthi from that team (and all others involved) for their valuable contribution to the programme.

Now back to the election…

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

The election preparation is in full swing now and we are almost at the end of the nominations process. Nominations close at 4pm next Tuesday 4th April and by the same time a day later I have to publish the full list of candidates standing for election. At the same time those names will go straight to the printers where 65,000 postal votes will be printed and dispatched to electors across the county. The team have done a great job managing a large quantity of work and I thank them all very much.

Our Highways team have been recognised as performing and Band 3 level for asset management which means that we get an additional £1.4million per year for highways capital maintenance allocation. This is a super performance by the team, so very well done to the them all. The team had a very successful LGA peer review last year and the improvement programme to get to level 3 has been well delivered.

Our innovative community asset transfer to Salisbury City Council completed today. A wide ranging package of property assets, land and front line highway and environment services transfer to the city. This “double devolution” is the blue print for future such deals with our larger towns.

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

Workplace Health workshop - mental health at the fore

On Tuesday I spent an excellent and interesting hour at a Workplace Health workshop led by Paul Collyer, Head of Occupational Health and Safety with around 30 other managers. Like the other 400 managers who will attend this session, I heard some interesting facts and figures which should make us all stop and think. For example, did you know that if all the sickness absence from 2016 was taken by just one employee then the last day that person would have been at work would have been sometime in 1873!

I also learned that 1 in 7 of people in employment are likely to experience a period of mental ill-health in any given year. What particularly surprised me though was that throughout these workshops the managers attending have, through a secret ballot voting exercise, consistently indicated that there is a clear difference in the approach we take to disclosing mental health issues as opposed to poor physical health. Over half of those attending said that they had personally experienced periods of poor mental health affecting their attendance or performance at work; yet about three quarters also expressed a view that they would have reservations about disclosing that to their own manager for fear of it being viewed negatively. We need to work towards creating a workplace culture where the apparent stigma being attached to poor mental health is eliminated. It will after all affect one in seven of us and no-one is immune. 

I for one would never view negatively anybody asking for our support and help with mental health issues. This is a commitment that we should all make to one another throughout the organisation.

Today, we are hosting a visit from Melanie Dawes, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG). We will be briefing and exploring topics such as health and social care integration, our Military Civilian Integration programme, local government reorganisation as well as local government financing. I am also keen to offer and understand how the department might use us to shape and develop draft legislation before it is enacted. After all, you (we) have the experience of what works and what probably won’t in our county.  

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

Developing and growing our economy

When I meet with staff from different services we usually recognise that we are responsible for services such as waste collection, highways, social care, safeguarding, planning and education in the county. What most of us don’t recognise is that we are also responsible for developing and growing our economy. This means more jobs, higher value jobs and areas for business to grow. This is a vital part of our role as a council as it is the prevention agenda for many of the social care and welfare aspects of the county.

So as we come toward the end of the 2013-17 council, I share will you some of the achievements of our economic development and planning team so that we can start to understand their role.

Overall unemployment in Wiltshire is 3.4% compared to the South West at 4.1% and Great Britain at 4.9%. The percentage of working age people on job seekers allowance is only 0.6% (GB is 1.2%) and has steadily fallen to this level from 4% in 2012. 

Workforce jobs in Wiltshire have increased by 27,900 or 15%.

The Business Location Index 2015 shows our area (Swindon and Wiltshire) to be amongst the top 5 business locations in England.

We have directly worked with business to create over a third (10,000) of these jobs, safeguarded tens of thousands more and established a pipeline of 11,000 potential new jobs as a result of ongoing work with businesses and investors. 

We provide support to over 2,500 businesses a year ranging from the very biggest employers through our Wiltshire 100 programme through to new start-ups and incubation through The Enterprise Network (TEN). 

This has resulted in major investment by companies such as TJ Morris, Dyson, Hermann Miller, Apetito, Babcock, Hitachi Capital, Welton Bibby Baron and DTRVMS as well as representing the successful growth and expansion of great local companies like Anthony Best Dynamics, Bath ASU, Hill Brush Company, Good Energy and Haydens Bakery. 

Last year we worked with business to bring in £173 million of foreign direct investment into the County with companies including Lockheed Martin, Ball Corporation, Wavin BV and Dynamic Air Engineering. 

Recently we have worked with QuinetiQ to secure Boeing’s investment in the south of county which will create 1,500 new high value jobs. 

Alongside direct business support we have secured funding to develop the infrastructure to enable and encourage economic growth including over £70 million of Local Growth Funding from Central Government and £40 million of European Programme Funding. 

We are delivering major improvements to the A350 at Chippenham and at Junction 17 on the M4. We have improved the A429 enabling significant expansion at Dyson. 

We supported the successful transformation of RAF Lyneham into the national Defence College of Technical Training. 

We have worked with the Army to deliver the Army Basing Programme, delivering over £1billion of infrastructure to enable the return of troops from Germany to Wiltshire by 2020, with nearly of quarter of the British Army being based here by then.

We have secured £16 million funding for redevelopment of Chippenham Station and are working with Network Rail and GWR to deliver this scheme. 

Also in Chippenham we have supported the redevelopment of Langley Park (including development of a new hotel for the town), major investment and growth by key employers – Wavin, Rotaval, Woods Group amongst others, successful regeneration of the former Hygrade meat factory site, creation of Chippenham Business Improvement District – generating £250,000 every year to support the promotion and vitality of the town centre.

Wiltshire Council’s direct intervention has helped retain a major employer (Good Energy) in the town  - at no expense to the tax payer while they develop plans for the next stage of their growth. 

We have supported the £21 million redevelopment of Chippenham College, including the development of a specialised 3D design and printing centre. In addition, Wiltshire College Lackham has been prioritised by the S&WLEP (a partnership between Wiltshire and Swindon Councils and the business community) for an £8.2 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal and we should hear the outcome later this month.

Trowbridge has seen the large scale regeneration of the Castle Place and Cradle Bridge sites with new cinema, restaurants, hotel, shops and high quality public realm. We are working in partnership with the NHS on the redevelopment of the East Wing site. 

We have secured £6 million towards improvements to the A350 at Yarnbrook, 

In the Salisbury area we are building a £10 million high tech science park at Porton, working with Boeing to bring 1,500 aerospace jobs to Boscombe, 

We helped establish the Salisbury Business Improvement District. 

Salisbury College and the redevelopment of Maltings/Central Car Park have been prioritised by the S&WLEP for an £20 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal of which we should hear the outcome later this month.

We have worked extensively with the military on developing routes to employment for army leavers through the MCI Partnership, a number of successful transition and job fairs, through our Higher Futures programme and through the Enterprise Network. 

We have invested £16 million in digital inclusion and access to super-fast broadband to support homes and business throughout the county. We have secured £2 million from to working on a programme extending ultra-fast broadband (100 Mbps) to facilitate further business growth. We are developing the ‘Digital Mansion’ in Corsham to nuture and incubate IT start-up companies. 

Just so you know…

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

Work priorities for this year

A busy week this one – two visits to Monkton Park, one to London and still a day to go. Good to see so many staff out and about though. This week we published the budget papers detailing plans to balance a difficult budget in ’17-18. This has been the toughest budget so far but of course setting it is the easier part; delivering it is always the real challenge. Even with a recommended council tax rise of 1.99% plus the social care levy of 3%, it leaves us with a gap of £13.3m to fill. We plan to do this through a combination of changes to policy, service delivery, general efficiency, procurement savings (totalling around £10m) and reducing the number of staff posts (£3m). For the latter we will target reductions in vacant posts and agency spend first as we always do.

Last week I got together with the mangers in the services I lead. We spoke about the priorities for this year, agreed the expectations from us all and then I spoke about staff engagement. I had been reading a lot about this over the Christmas period. I read that up to 70% of staff in organisations are disengaged. I am pleased that we don’t have those levels as will be evidenced in the staff survey results that will come out in a couple of weeks. I researched the impact that managers can have on staff engagement and shared what I found with those attending. Here’s what I found:

Some research & data

•  70% of employees say they are disengaged at work (Gallup, 2016)
•  Engaged, motivated employees improve bottom line performance
–  31% more productive, 3 times more creative
–  87% less likely to leave
•   Most organisations fail to hold managers to account for this
•   70% of motivation is influenced by an employees line manager
•   Employees don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. Scary!

Making things worse – the 7 negative or demotivating behaviours

•   Making a lot of stupid rules (we need to challenge ourselves here as we have some of these I think; grateful for your feedback)
•   Letting accomplishments go unrecognised
•   Hiring and promoting the wrong people
•   Treating everybody equally
•   Tolerating poor performance
•   Going back on their commitments
•   Being apathetic

Making things better – the 7 positive behaviours

•  Follow the Platinum rule (not the golden rule). The golden rule is to treat people as you would want to be treated. The problem here is that we are all different and need to be treated differently! So the platinum rule is to treat people as they wish to be treated. 
•  Be strong without being harsh
•  Remember that communication is a two way street
•  Be a role model, not a preacher
•  Be transparent
•  Be humble
•  Take a genuine interest in employees work life balance

Bringing it all together

•  If you cultivate the characteristics above and avoid the demotivators, you’ll become the kind of boss that people remember for the rest of their lives. Oh god please let us achieve this in 2017.

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

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