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