Friday 15 January 2010

Another snowy week but at least it appears to be going now. Well done to all our staff who have performed so valiantly; keeping roads open, schools open, vulnerable people supported in their homes; operating our call centres to the public, paying benefits and a thousand other key roles. It has been interesting and satisfying to see the press reaction to all of this. There seems to be a widely accepted view that the Council did a great job. Well done everybody.

I visited the Bradley Road Hub this week. It was a good turn out with about 12 managers present. First we discussed Team Wire, focusing on the harmonisation programme of terms and conditions. There are over 40 terms and conditions to harmonise so it's going to take most of this year to get to a negotiated recommendation that the organisation and unions can put to staff. All staff will be having a face-to-face team meeting with their managers over the next four weeks to discuss the details of the harmonisation programme and to address any questions or worries that staff may have. It's worth repeating here that this process affects all staff, even those that are currently on the old WCC terms and conditions, and it's also not about cost reduction. The pay bill is likely to increase due to harmonisation.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with the Revenues & Benefits "lean" team at Bradley Road. This teams comprises members from all four hubs. They are coming to the end of their review of Council Tax and will be presenting their findings and recommendations to senior management, including the members next month. I was very impressed by the enthusiasm and knowledge that the team had built up. Their radical recommendations on service redesign will deliver significant performance improvements to our customers and reduce our costs.

Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend and speak again next week.

Carlton

Friday 8 January 2010

Happy New Year. I hope that everybody had a good Christmas break and are back at work a little more relaxed than we finished last year. I had swine flu for the first half of the Christmas period which was an experience...

2010 has started with the weather dominating our business this week. I spent some time with the Customer Care team yesterday understanding our plans to cope with the number of calls coming into the business, and earlier in the week I visited Dave Small and his team at the Middlefield Learning Disability Centre in Chippenham. This is the centre that we plan to co-locate into the Chippenham leisure centre later this year. I have to say that I'm always blown away by the professionalism, tenacity and overall customer focus of our teams and staff. Both teams really bring to life the vision and ambition that we have for this new council. I know that with people like this on our side, we can achieve everything we need to this year and in the future.

January is always the time when we are finalising the budget for the next financial year. This years process has been the smoothest that I have known here in Wiltshire -well done Finance - and I'm pleased to report that we have a balanced budget which we will be reviewing with the Executive during the next few weeks. This is a great position to be in given the uncertainty nationally that we all hear and read about most days.

Thanks for reading and talk again next week.

Carlton

Friday 18 December 2009

Well this is my final blog of 2009. I would just like to wish every body a happy Christmas and peaceful 2010, and thank you all for the tremendous effort and success that you have all delivered for the council over the past year. I appreciate it greatly.

Talk again in 2010...

Carlton

Thursday 10 December 2009

This week Cabinet and CLT met for a full day together. We spent time revisiting the members' vision and their priorities for the next three years. We looked at the external constraints that we all face, the recession and the impact on public sector spending and considered how we factor these into our plans for the political term of the council. More importantly we explored how we will work together, in terms of the time that we need to spend together and also the key leadership issues around setting the right culture, communication, trust and us being clear about our values. It was good to spend some quality time together and we committed to repeating this regularly.

Today John Noeken, Resources Portfolio Holder and I are welcoming Cornwall Council to Trowbridge. Key Cabinet and Scrutiny members, including their leader are visiting us to understand and see how we have delivered Shared Services and SAP coupled with the cost reductions that we have achieved. It's always good to meet other councils and show case what we have achieved - much as we did a few years ago when we visited others who had already delivered their change programmes. The reason they are visiting us is down to all of you and the incredible change that you have all delivered this year.

We have been working this week on preparing a balanced budget for members. We are almost balanced, and in the next few weeks, we should be complete for 20010-11. The Chancellor's Pre-Budget Statement (PBS) yesterday echoed many of the actions that Finance have been predicting in the Medium Term Financial Strategy, so there were no real surprises for us in terms of the impact on our finances. The news of rises in National Insurance and the cap on public sector pay was expected but will hit individuals hard!

Thanks for reading and talk again next week.

Carlton

Friday 4 December 2009

It's getting very close to Christmas now so I thought I'd better take Monday off with Tracy and do some shopping. We managed to get most of it done in Bath which was completely empty versus its normal heaving self. In the pub by 1pm was a result from my perspective!

The Corporate Leadership Team met with Andrew Kerr, our new Chief Executive on Wednesday evening for dinner. It was a good opportunity to get to know him informally out side of the work environment. He starts with us in the second week of February. On Thursday I met him again for our first one-to-one where we discussed the major issues facing Resources at present; harmonisation of pay and conditions, the budget and efficiency, service performance and how we will develop quickly the community and customer agenda. It was a good discussion. My overarching impression of him so far was the need for pace - faster delivery of our vision and what we want to improve, as well as a shift in focus from internal improvement to external delivery. These both fit well with where I think we need to be moving.

Moving on from the strategic to the tactical, here is some news that I've been asked to include relating to our new contract for office stationery. We have a new supplier "Lyreco" for all stationery orders now live. The Lyreco stationery catalogue is now accessible via Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) on SAP. There will be a number of road shows on this week moving around hubs, to explain the new setup and explain how to order. The road shows are aimed at requisitioners but others are most welcome - book via Employee Self Service on SAP. The key driver for this change is improved value for money, quality and service.

Have a great weekend and talk again next week.

Carlton