Election thanks, new government and new agenda

It’s a week since the general election and I’ve been surprised how quickly the new government has got stuck into their new agenda. The announcement yesterday from the Chancellor George Osborne to devolve to cities increased power, responsibility and money for key services such as health, skills/learning, welfare payments in return for elected mayors and retention of business rate growth is welcome. It needs to go much further though to include counties, in which over half the UK’s gross value add is generated. We will be lobbying hard so that the counties and south are not forgotten in the rush to devolve power from Whitehall. 

I would like to thank all of the 1,500 staff who worked on that election last week. Our performance in all 5 constituencies was excellent with the candidates, agents, media and others all feeding back that it went smoothly. We implemented Individual Elector Registration (IER) at the same time – one of the biggest changes in the electoral registration system ever – and this went well too, although across the country a significant number of previously registered individuals were not on the new register for a number of reasons. I would particularly like to thank the whole election team and John Watling in particular who led this for us. As always, a job very well done.

I did my first 10 mile time trial on Wednesday evening in Frome and was pleasantly surprised with a time of 27 minutes 57 seconds. I had set a goal of sub-30 minutes later in the summer so this was pleasing, although it reminded me how rubbish arbitrary targets are! We should remember that in our service performance reporting. Looking forward to my second outing next week.  

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

Election nearly upon us ...

I’m in Monkton Park today with the election team for a run thorough of the Chippenham General Election count later today. We always rehearse these ahead of time to ensure everybody knows what will happen, when and where so there are no surprises on the night. I do hate surprises. We have so far had 40,000 postal votes returned to us – about 65% of the total issued – which have been opened, scanned and secured to go to the five separate counts next week. Thank you to Sue Reeves for leading this work with the team at Monkton Park. Roll on next Thursday…

Earlier this week we got together with all of the economic development and planning team – over 200 people – in Warminster for half a day to work together on the direction of the organisation, the service plan which is being developed and to review the staff survey and culture development / service change results. There was a lot of energy in the room with great questions from the team. We spoke about the need to not obsess about the financial pressures we face (a negative, energy draining experience in my opinion), but use our time wisely to rethink and action how services could be redesigned and delivered against the changing purpose and demand from our customers.

One of the largest challenges we face with respect to this is the changing expectations around our online or digital offer. When people can sit at home and conduct quite complex activities on line, sometimes with a single click, their whole expectation from all of our services starts to change rapidly. We must embrace this if we are to remain relevant to the people we serve across the county. The irrelevance of local government, and government in general to many of our citizens, is by far the biggest challenge we face over the next 5-10 years. So we better start thinking and doing something about it today.  

Speak again soon on the other side of the election. For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter.

Carlton

Election preparations in full swing

“Well the election campaign is now in full swing and so are our preparations. The election team have been flat out this week receiving nominations for the five parliamentary constituencies plus the two unitary by-elections that we have running on May 7^th. As an election junkie I love this part of the process, lots of stuff happening to ensure election day (and night) is a big success as well as observing the ebb and flow of the political debate at the national and local level. Exciting stuff. The big task for today and the weekend is printing half a million ballot papers with the candidate’s names on – better check the spelling again…

To view the candidates standing in all five constituencies, please click on this link:

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/council/elections/forthcomingelections/ukparliamentaryelections.htm

There is still  just over a week to go for people to register to vote in the election. The deadline for people to register  is Monday April 20 and the deadline for the receipt of new postal votes is 5pm on April 21. People are able to register to vote if they are 16 or over, a British or Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of the Irish republic.

All people need to complete the process is their date of birth and National Insurance number. To register click here.

If they haven’t done so already, I would urge people to register to vote. It’s important people have their say on who makes decisions that can affect them and their family’s daily lives. The more people that come out and vote can only be a good thing for the democratic process.

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”

Solar eclipse and the budget speech

“As an amateur astronomer I’m very excited about this morning's partial eclipse although looking out of the window right now all I can see are white clouds so it may be a bit of a disappointment. Still, at 85% coverage we should all notice it going a bit dark at about 0925. Have fun watching 

I had my hernia operation last week so have been off work for 8 days recuperating. Back now though and just a little sore and stiff. No cycling for 4 weeks and I can’t lift anything heavier than a kettle which has got me nicely out of any housework or DIY at home. Thanks for the good wishes that you sent me, I appreciate it.

Being at home enabled me to watch the entire budget speech and analysis as it happened. It was interesting from several perspectives. The economy seems to be growing well, although some are describing the growth as fragile and it’s good to see that wages are now rising in real terms again. The key message I took from Wednesdays announcement for us in local government was we can expect to see the same size cuts to our government grants between 2015-19 as we did over the last four years. This was not surprising and it’s interesting to see the commentators press politicians from all sides for the detail of exactly what they plan to cut. Nobody seems to wish to give that detail though.

We will have to continue to plan on reductions of around 10% per year for the next four years. It will mean that we have to continue to innovate, identify new ways of working with communities and partners to deliver services within an affordable level and take the appropriate risks to make this happen. We have a strong track record of this and coupled to staff and members with great ideas I am confident that we will meet this challenge well.

I met with the Economic Development & Planning team yesterday – about 80 staff for one of their regular “Knowledge Series” workshops. They get together periodically to share key policy and implementation plans and discuss how they can continue to develop their services and innovate together. These are always excellent learning opportunities and it was good to see so many people attending. I was particularly impressed by some of their staff survey and culture development data that they have been working on as part of their service transformation programme. The improvements achieved are very impressive.

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 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