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"