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This time next week we will be counting the votes in the four counting centres across the county. First unitary results should start to be announced at around noon with the final results known by around 3pm. You’ll be able to follow these on the web, our twitter account or BBC Wiltshire. Then we’ll move onto the town and parish counting and results which should all be declared by around 5pm. All very exciting, if like me you’re a bit of an election junky. With the simultaneous announcement of the General Election, the election team and many other staff are working flat out. Long 12 hour plus days, most weekends and the bank holidays too. Tomorrow we’re packing the ballot boxes for collection by the presiding officers and poll clerks next week. I would like to thank you all for your commitment and selflessness in supporting this important work.
In preparation for the Monday following the election, Carolyn and I have alternative draft business plans written (depending on who wins the election) for the new executive. This is together with a full programme of cabinet decisions and supporting papers that need to be taken to continue our work, development of the organisation and the services it delivers along with the major policy decisions that need to be taken affecting the county. The next four years are going to be very challenging for local government across the country but we’re well positioned to continue our journey of high performance service delivery, innovation, change and focusing on the priorities of the individuals, families, communities and businesses across Wiltshire.
Now back to the election… 33,000 postal votes received, opened, scanned and processed so far and they’re coming in at a rate of around 3,500 per day.
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
Are you a manager with a passion for developing staff? You may have seen this in a recent Managers Wire. I fully support and actively encourage our senior leaders to provide mentoring for our less experienced managers and recognise the enormous benefits that this can bring for both parties. As Ralph Nader said, “The function of leadership is to produce more leaders not more followers”. Our job is to grown and nurture leadership and management at all levels throughout our organisation. If you feel you can develop our leaders of tomorrow please apply to become a mentor.
The next mentor development session is taking place on Friday 19 May, from 9.00 am-1.00 pm in the Lacock room, County Hall. If you are interested in finding out more, and how to apply, details can be found here Mentoring Guidance for Mentors Mentoring Guidance for Mentors 124kb or you can email amanda.collyer@wiltshire.gov.uk for further information.
Now for some well-deserved thank yous and congratulations.
HR & OD have been shortlisted for a number of external awards. The annual PPMA (Public Service People Managers Association) awards, which recognise excellence in people management, will take place in Bristol on 27 April during the PPMA annual conference, and the council’s team have been shortlisted as finalist in three of these awards. These are:
• The role of HR in innovation
• Transforming the working environment
• Sustainable transformation
Many congratulations to Jo Pitt and her team for this achievement. They were up against some stiff national competition and have done extremely well to be shortlisted and I am sure you will all join me in wishing them the best of luck at the awards in April.
Registration Service - The Registration Service, led by Alison Manning underwent an audit conducted by the General Register Office for England and Wales from 16 to 24 March inclusive. The final report has been received which states that the district has now achieved a high level of security around GRO certificate stock and registration records, this is a credit to all staff so very well done.
Award Winning Single View - The Council “Single View” programme, led by Ian Baker and Steve Vercella has just been awarded the National IESE (Improvement and Efficiency Social Enterprise) award for innovation (http://www.iese.org.uk/events/iese-awards-2017). Special thanks must also go to Paul Mills, Lisa McKeigue and Tamara Smith from the programme office for their contributions. The Single View Programme has been working to deliver information across organisational boundaries in the public sector to increase efficiency and decision making and improve outcomes for the public in Wiltshire. One of the early deliverables was the provision of care information to medical General Practitioners surgeries to improve the information they have on particular patients.
An important part of this programme was the technology to access and share the data which was developed by the Development Team within IT. Special thanks and congratulations go to Chris Sercombe, Chris Beavan and Samyukta Billakurthi from that team (and all others involved) for their valuable contribution to the programme.
Now back to the election…
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 election preparation is in full swing now and we are almost at the end of the nominations process. Nominations close at 4pm next Tuesday 4th April and by the same time a day later I have to publish the full list of candidates standing for election. At the same time those names will go straight to the printers where 65,000 postal votes will be printed and dispatched to electors across the county. The team have done a great job managing a large quantity of work and I thank them all very much.
Our Highways team have been recognised as performing and Band 3 level for asset management which means that we get an additional £1.4million per year for highways capital maintenance allocation. This is a super performance by the team, so very well done to the them all. The team had a very successful LGA peer review last year and the improvement programme to get to level 3 has been well delivered.
Our innovative community asset transfer to Salisbury City Council completed today. A wide ranging package of property assets, land and front line highway and environment services transfer to the city. This “double devolution” is the blue print for future such deals with our larger towns.
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
On Tuesday I spent an excellent and interesting hour at a Workplace Health workshop led by Paul Collyer, Head of Occupational Health and Safety with around 30 other managers. Like the other 400 managers who will attend this session, I heard some interesting facts and figures which should make us all stop and think. For example, did you know that if all the sickness absence from 2016 was taken by just one employee then the last day that person would have been at work would have been sometime in 1873!
I also learned that 1 in 7 of people in employment are likely to experience a period of mental ill-health in any given year. What particularly surprised me though was that throughout these workshops the managers attending have, through a secret ballot voting exercise, consistently indicated that there is a clear difference in the approach we take to disclosing mental health issues as opposed to poor physical health. Over half of those attending said that they had personally experienced periods of poor mental health affecting their attendance or performance at work; yet about three quarters also expressed a view that they would have reservations about disclosing that to their own manager for fear of it being viewed negatively. We need to work towards creating a workplace culture where the apparent stigma being attached to poor mental health is eliminated. It will after all affect one in seven of us and no-one is immune.
I for one would never view negatively anybody asking for our support and help with mental health issues. This is a commitment that we should all make to one another throughout the organisation.
Today, we are hosting a visit from Melanie Dawes, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG). We will be briefing and exploring topics such as health and social care integration, our Military Civilian Integration programme, local government reorganisation as well as local government financing. I am also keen to offer and understand how the department might use us to shape and develop draft legislation before it is enacted. After all, you (we) have the experience of what works and what probably won’t in our county.
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
When I meet with staff from different services we usually recognise that we are responsible for services such as waste collection, highways, social care, safeguarding, planning and education in the county. What most of us don’t recognise is that we are also responsible for developing and growing our economy. This means more jobs, higher value jobs and areas for business to grow. This is a vital part of our role as a council as it is the prevention agenda for many of the social care and welfare aspects of the county.
So as we come toward the end of the 2013-17 council, I share will you some of the achievements of our economic development and planning team so that we can start to understand their role.
Overall unemployment in Wiltshire is 3.4% compared to the South West at 4.1% and Great Britain at 4.9%. The percentage of working age people on job seekers allowance is only 0.6% (GB is 1.2%) and has steadily fallen to this level from 4% in 2012.
Workforce jobs in Wiltshire have increased by 27,900 or 15%.
The Business Location Index 2015 shows our area (Swindon and Wiltshire) to be amongst the top 5 business locations in England.
We have directly worked with business to create over a third (10,000) of these jobs, safeguarded tens of thousands more and established a pipeline of 11,000 potential new jobs as a result of ongoing work with businesses and investors.
We provide support to over 2,500 businesses a year ranging from the very biggest employers through our Wiltshire 100 programme through to new start-ups and incubation through The Enterprise Network (TEN).
This has resulted in major investment by companies such as TJ Morris, Dyson, Hermann Miller, Apetito, Babcock, Hitachi Capital, Welton Bibby Baron and DTRVMS as well as representing the successful growth and expansion of great local companies like Anthony Best Dynamics, Bath ASU, Hill Brush Company, Good Energy and Haydens Bakery.
Last year we worked with business to bring in £173 million of foreign direct investment into the County with companies including Lockheed Martin, Ball Corporation, Wavin BV and Dynamic Air Engineering.
Recently we have worked with QuinetiQ to secure Boeing’s investment in the south of county which will create 1,500 new high value jobs.
Alongside direct business support we have secured funding to develop the infrastructure to enable and encourage economic growth including over £70 million of Local Growth Funding from Central Government and £40 million of European Programme Funding.
We are delivering major improvements to the A350 at Chippenham and at Junction 17 on the M4. We have improved the A429 enabling significant expansion at Dyson.
We supported the successful transformation of RAF Lyneham into the national Defence College of Technical Training.
We have worked with the Army to deliver the Army Basing Programme, delivering over £1billion of infrastructure to enable the return of troops from Germany to Wiltshire by 2020, with nearly of quarter of the British Army being based here by then.
We have secured £16 million funding for redevelopment of Chippenham Station and are working with Network Rail and GWR to deliver this scheme.
Also in Chippenham we have supported the redevelopment of Langley Park (including development of a new hotel for the town), major investment and growth by key employers – Wavin, Rotaval, Woods Group amongst others, successful regeneration of the former Hygrade meat factory site, creation of Chippenham Business Improvement District – generating £250,000 every year to support the promotion and vitality of the town centre.
Wiltshire Council’s direct intervention has helped retain a major employer (Good Energy) in the town - at no expense to the tax payer while they develop plans for the next stage of their growth.
We have supported the £21 million redevelopment of Chippenham College, including the development of a specialised 3D design and printing centre. In addition, Wiltshire College Lackham has been prioritised by the S&WLEP (a partnership between Wiltshire and Swindon Councils and the business community) for an £8.2 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal and we should hear the outcome later this month.
Trowbridge has seen the large scale regeneration of the Castle Place and Cradle Bridge sites with new cinema, restaurants, hotel, shops and high quality public realm. We are working in partnership with the NHS on the redevelopment of the East Wing site.
We have secured £6 million towards improvements to the A350 at Yarnbrook,
In the Salisbury area we are building a £10 million high tech science park at Porton, working with Boeing to bring 1,500 aerospace jobs to Boscombe,
We helped establish the Salisbury Business Improvement District.
Salisbury College and the redevelopment of Maltings/Central Car Park have been prioritised by the S&WLEP for an £20 million grant from the Government’s Local Growth Deal of which we should hear the outcome later this month.
We have worked extensively with the military on developing routes to employment for army leavers through the MCI Partnership, a number of successful transition and job fairs, through our Higher Futures programme and through the Enterprise Network.
We have invested £16 million in digital inclusion and access to super-fast broadband to support homes and business throughout the county. We have secured £2 million from to working on a programme extending ultra-fast broadband (100 Mbps) to facilitate further business growth. We are developing the ‘Digital Mansion’ in Corsham to nuture and incubate IT start-up companies.
Just so you know…
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
