Budget and operation update

Well what a week this has been. It started with the budget at council on Tuesday. It was a long eight hour meeting with over twenty items on the agenda, only one of which was the budget. This received a long four hour debate, and for a local government junky like me made for fascinating listening. It is important that officers understand the thinking, views and opinions on all sides of the chamber, and the budget speeches and subsequent debate give the best opportunity in the municipal year to do this. If you haven’t attended at least part of a council meeting then you should.

There were powerful cases made for both putting up and maintaining existing levels of council tax to our residents. This was linked to the funding pressures which we are receiving from central government and the resultant impact that this has on much needed community services throughout the county. Taking out £30m (10%) from the budget has a big impact on many services and their users, and each year these changes get more difficult to deliver.

It will be tough like this for a further five years, so we are going to have to get used to this sort of challenge and meeting it with creative, innovative ways of doing things differently. And of course we will need to stop some services completely. We will need to make much better use of the assets in our communities – the people, their will and enthusiasm to help as well as the voluntary organisations, other sources of funding, and businesses to create new ways of delivering services which our residents value.

Finally this week ended with a trip to the RUH this morning. I have been waiting for a hernia repair for 28 weeks now and I got the call last night to go in for some pre-op. tests. So all being well I’ll be having the op. on March 9. It needs doing well before the general election and well before my first competitive cycling event, both in May. I shall just have to watch my weight while I’m off the bike for a month.

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 staff survey outcome

Today we have announced the results of the staff survey that many of us took part in before Christmas. Sixty per cent of us took part in the survey which is a high response rate for any organisation.

The headline results are shown below, and I’m pleased that we have improved out results in 9 of the 10 sections of the survey (one area stayed the same). This is despite the fact that we have had to make significant changes affecting every member of staff as a result of central government’s austerity programme which has meant that the council has had its income reduced by over 40% since 2010. These changes impacting staff include revisions to terms and conditions, working arrangements, office accommodation and car parking. All changes that usually have a negative impact on how we feel about our role and organisation.

Of particular note is that we have improved staff engagement by 5% - and we have seen a corresponding drop in those staff reporting that they are disengaged. This is vitally important to our communities and customers who receive services from us.

Thank you to everybody who completed the survey. It allows us as a management team to start working with you all and your teams to develop actions together to continuously improve our organisation and business.

	Average positive response		Change
Section	2014	2012
Change	65%	61%	+4%
Your role	63%	63%	0
Culture, wellbeing and safety	77%	73%	+4%
Reward and Recognition	62%	58%	+4%
Communication	60%	57%	+3%
Management and Leadership	53%	50%	+3%
Learning and Development	57%	52%	+5%
Employee engagement	56%	51%	+5%
Teamwork	75%	72%	+3%
Customers	70%	68%	+2%

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

Budget consultations begin

"Well hasn’t January flown by! February starts at the weekend and the days are getting noticeably longer. Roll on spring…

Yesterday we published the detail of the 2015-16 budget online. This is available to everybody in the county as this week we start the formal consultation on the proposals made. As I have said before, we have to save £30m next year and the budget proposes some radical recommendations to do that. I would encourage all staff to spend a few minutes reading those proposals and to give us your feedback. It’s important that we hear the views of staff.

Last night we held the first budget consultation meeting in Chippenham. There were about 60 members of the public in attendance (it was good to see some young people there too) and I was reassured from the extensive question and answer session that most people recognise how tough it is right now in the public sector; balancing the opposing requirements of increased demand and need (particularly in services covering adults, children, waste and highways) with significant central government grant reductions of 13% plus next year. Also of interest was the view that Wiltshire Council was very open and transparent about these pressures. Nobody in the audience came up with any radically different views about how to meet this challenge and all the proposals seem to be supported by most. We move on to Trowbridge tonight, Devizes and Salisbury next week so do please come along.

Over the last week or so I have met several hundred staff from many different services. I like this part of my job the most. I attended the Planning & Economic Development knowledge series last week which brings together over 100 staff from across those services to explore how they can support other services in delivering their objectives. The staff induction event was well attended by over 70 staff too, where the leader and I discussed the organisation, how we work together and the objectives in the business plan. Yesterday I spoke at the Highways and Transport managers and team leaders session where they spent a day developing their strategic & delivery plans for the next year. It was inspiring to hear the views, opinions and questions from across the organisation.

I continue to train on my bike every day for my first road time trial on May 13. It seems a long way off but it will be here before I know it…

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”

The future is ours to seize in 2015

 Happy new year to you all. I hope you had  a good break over the Christmas period and managed to avoid the colds, flu and chest infections that most people seem to have got. Me included.

2015 is going to be an interesting year. The general election campaign kicked off immediately on January 2 with the major parties making the NHS A&E capacity issues, bed blocking and economic recovery the early issues to discuss. And today we have the televised leaders’ debate issue all over the press from a perspective of will it or won’t it happen? Only another four months to go. Our role however is to run a fair and accurate election and our team here in the council is working on that. Plans are progressing well.

The more interesting aspect of the election for me is what will happen on May 8 – the day after. It’s clear that there are further cuts in public sector funding to come which could amount to a further 40% for us. This will be challenging and tricky to deliver and will require us to continue to think differently about the purpose or local government and how it goes about delivering the key aspects of its vision and objectives. We will need to become more of a facilitator and enabler for others to deliver what our communities need and we will need to redesign our direct service provision to be high performing within the financial constraints that we have. We have a strong track record here.

This will not be easy but we must remain positive and up for the challenge. We have great staff, management and elected members all with good ideas about how we can achieve this. Fortune favours the brave, and we must remember that. Bold, innovative policy developed from an in depth knowledge of our communities and customers and delivered with attention to detail. The future is ours to seize in 2015.   

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