Staff engagement forums come to an end and a new interim director of education and skills

This week we are meeting with each of the directors to talk through the financial pressures and challenges in the services that they cover to consider where savings and additional income can be delivered next year. It’s important that we all have a clear understanding of the pressures and opportunities across the council as we need to find around £30 million for 2018/19. Whilst this won’t be easy – it’s about looking at new ways to deliver and every possible avenue to increase income. We will be discussing the outcome of these meetings with cabinet members on Thursday to agree which proposals we take forward and develop further.

As we discussed at the recent staff engagement forums, we’re keen for the work on the budget to be as collaborative as possible. No-one knows the services better than those of you who deliver them and it’s good to get a fresh perspective on the issues that we face and to hear new ideas that will help to deliver what’s required.

In terms of the national financial picture, the Chancellor delivered his budget last week and we should hear on 11 December the financial settlement that will be getting from government for next year. We know the broad picture but need the details to clarify the savings that need to be made. Whilst we know the pressures - we need to focus on how we make the best use of the money we do have, rather than what we haven’t.

We completed this year’s annual staff engagement forums in Chippenham and Salisbury last week and we would like to extend our thanks to all of you who came along. We enjoyed seeing you and it really gave us a sense of the mood of the organisation. As with any big organisation we know there’s need for improvement in some areas, but overall we were hugely encouraged and think we’re in a good place as we work towards achieving what we have set out in the business plan.

The questions and feedback received are being collated as we write this and will be on The Wire as soon as we’ve had a chance to go through them and provide answers to all of them. As a leadership team we heard that it’s important we are as visible and more accessible. We will look at the possibility of visiting the hubs more often.

Those who attended the forums will have seen the highlights of 2017 video touching on some of our many achievements so far this year. It is testament to all of you that tough decisions were made in deciding what to include and leave out in the final cut. We could have put together a video that was twice the length and that’s a good problem to have. If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.

As well as the annual highlights, every Monday we present a round-up of council-related activity from the previous week to cabinet members at our regular meeting. As you know, things move at quite a pace so we find it beneficial to take some time out to talk about some of the work we’re doing and update cabinet on the vast number of issues, meetings, events and milestones that happen on a weekly basis. We thought that you might also find it interesting so we have published the presentation on The Wire and will continue to do so weekly. This week’s update included the Maltings redevelopment in Salisbury, the review of electoral services and a speech Baroness Scott made to the Town and Country Planning Association - to name just three.

The Association of Electoral Administrators’ review of our election services focused on performance, risk, resourcing, resilience, registration and legislative compliance and interviews with teams who work closely with elections, including communications, customer services and IT. Thanks to all who were involved. Take a look here at all of last week’s highlights and achievements.

Protecting the vulnerable is our top priority and one of the challenges we face is an ever-increasing aging population and making sure there are services in place to support them. The impact of elderly people on the emergency services was the topic of last night’s ‘999 – What’s Your Emergency?’ episode on Channel 4. Whatever you think about how the issue was portrayed in the programme, protecting the vulnerable is key to not just us but all our public sector partners. More people are living for longer and whilst that’s a good thing, last night’s programme did highlight the issues that comes with ageing.

Today the Boundary Review gets started with a series of briefings for officers and members taking place. The review will look at the make-up of electoral wards across the county and could well lead to some wide-ranging changes ahead of the next local election. More on this issue will follow over the next few weeks and months.

We are pleased to confirm that this week Alan Stubbersfield joined us as the interim director education and skills. Getting a fresh perspective and an external view will be beneficial, and we’re looking forward to working with Alan.

Finally, Alison was extremely sorry to miss the staff forums and wanted to let everyone know that the adult social care transformation programme continues at pace.

More next week,

Alison, Alistair, Carlton and Terence 

Staff engagement forum sessions and a new head of electoral services

Hello,

A big thank you to everyone who attended one of the Trowbridge staff engagement forum sessions last week and contributed to what we all thought was a worthwhile and productive day.

This week the forums are in Chippenham and Salisbury and we’re looking forward to seeing you there and hearing your views. There are still a few spaces available so please book on if you haven’t already. And, please do come ready with your questions as we want the sessions to be as interactive and informative as possible.

We’re collating all your questions and will publish the answers following all the sessions. So far the questions range from subjects such as the budget, the savings we need to make, staff parking and staff development. What’s clear is there’s a real passion for the job amongst you and that’s been great to see.

We certainly didn’t have a quiet end to the week as following the engagement forums we spent Friday with around 100 representatives from many of the town and parish councils in Wiltshire. They are vital partners in the work we do and we wanted to take some time to talk with them and really establish a positive way of working going forward, which given the budget pressures we have will benefit us all. We want to do more locally and the parish and town councils will be key to that. It was a really successful event and we’re sure there will be more like it to come to really help us capitalise on the momentum we have now built.  

While on the subject of budget pressures, we await with keen interest Wednesday’s budget delivered by the chancellor. We’re not expecting many surprises, and our sound financial management means that we are ready to manage any that may come our way. We’ll take some time to sift through the detail to establish how it will affect us. This week we’re doing some planning and preparation work to focus on our budget as next week we’re hosting star chambers to talk to managers and cabinet members about possible savings and where they consider their services can be done differently. We’re keen to get a fresh perspective and we’re sure that this new approach will be productive.

Today and yesterday Terence and Alistair attended the County Councils Network (CCN) Conference alongside Jane. It’s always good to network with local authority colleagues and find out how the issues we collectively face can be tackled. Two of the themes this year are devolution and ‘super councils’. Jane, as the CCN Reform Spokeswoman delivered an introduction piece based on the Wiltshire experience to drive significant change and combine local authorities to the benefit of local residents and communities. It was a think piece to encourage debate and change.

The next cabinet meeting takes place in a few weeks and yesterday CLT discussed the agenda for the meeting. There is a lot for members to discuss and determine including the school places strategy, carers strategy, an update on the campus programme and an interim proposal for leisure provision.

We’re pleased to announce that Caroline Rudland has been appointed as our new head of electoral services, replacing John Watling who retired earlier this year. John left behind some big shoes to fill but Caroline is more than capable and brings with her a wealth of experience and lots of new and exciting ideas on how she sees this service developing. We’re looking forward to working with her.

Finally, we just want to ask you to take a few minutes to fill out the Health and Wellbeing Staff Survey. The results of the confidential survey help shape the way that resources are used to help support your health and wellbeing in the workplace. That’s obviously important enough, but you could also win yourself some vouchers so it’s definitely worth filling it out.

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow and Thursday.

Alison, Alistair, Carlton and Terence 

Peer Review recap and this week's Staff Engagement Forum

Hello,

Last week we welcomed the LGA Peer Review Team to County Hall to carry out a review on the organisation. The peer review is a voluntary process that provides the opportunity for independent people, usually from other local authorities, to review how we work. Their role is to act as a critical friend and provide honest feedback on what they think works, and where we could do things differently and better. We’re big advocates of this process and although a lot of preparation is required, and it can be intensive, the benefits and the learning we get is extremely worthwhile.

The peers spent four days with us and during that time they spoke to more than 130 people, attended 40 meetings, carried out a number of site visits and spent an incredible 260 hours determining their findings – this is the equivalent of one person spending more than seven weeks in Wiltshire. 

The initial feedback we’ve had has been encouraging and we’d like to thank everyone who played a part in ensuring the review ran as smoothly and professionally as it did – the reviewers were very impressed with the organisation (in both senses of the word). Here’s some of the initial feedback we received:

• Strong, visible and accessible political leadership that gives clear direction
• Staff feel valued and say this a great place to work
• Children's services recovery has successfully leveraged wider resources and commitment 
• Solid financial performance over the last four years
• Good digital strategy and now we need to move to delivery involving digital customer access to all services and automation of manual work processing 
• We should adopt a planning and performance management regime that links business and financial planning and supports openness and accountability 
• We could provide more clarity on asset transfers and be more assertive about the agenda
• There is more work to do to build a shared understanding of the opportunities, investment required and the skill needed to pursue our commercial and digital agenda

There is lots for us to reflect on and to take forward and we will be considering the next steps and a plan of action.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all at the staff forums which start later this week (please book a place, if you haven’t already done so). It will obviously be the first staff forum for us as a leadership team and we’re looking forward to reflecting on some of the highlights of the past year, as well as sharing our vision going forward. However, the main focus of these sessions is to hear from you and your views on the council and its future plans. 

We’re also looking forward to engaging with other key stakeholders later this week; the town and parish councils. We’re hosting a training and network day for representatives of these organisations and the agenda will include a variety of topics to assist them as effective local councils. We will be updating on our priorities over the next decade, information governance, highways, planning, budget setting and communications. We want our link with the parish and town council to be strong; particularly as they are close to the local communities and deliver many services and we are looking at devolving more services and assets in the future.

Finally, interviews for some of the Director posts take place this week. We are pleased to announce that yesterday Lucy Townsend was appointed as Director – Families and Children’s Services. We will provide further announcements, as appropriate, following interviews.

Have a good week and look forward to seeing some of you on Thursday.

Alison, Alistair, Carlton and Terence 

Peer review update and EmployAbility Fair

Hello,

We welcomed the peer review team at County Hall yesterday. Following a brief overview of the organisation from Jane and ourselves, the team spent its first day with us meeting the leadership teams; cabinet and all of us. They also met several directors focusing on HR and OD, communities, children’s transformation and our work to become more digital.

Their initial feedback so far is measured.  The team will be on site until Thursday and will be attending various meetings and focus groups with both internal staff, elected members and external partners. We would like to thank all of you that are attending meetings for taking the time to share the work that you do to make Wiltshire a better place.

As we said in last week’s blog, we look forward to hearing the peer reviewer’s findings and thoughts on where we can do things differently to improve what we do; particularly on the areas that we have asked them to focus on.

At our weekly meeting with cabinet members yesterday we discussed a range of issues; one was the consultation that’s currently underway on proposals for car parking charges; in particular the residential parking in Salisbury which cabinet has requested some further work is undertaken to assess the proposal and costs, based on initial feedback.

We also talked about today’s cabinet meeting, which was attended by members of the public to speak on the special schools provision and adult social care services. It’s always good to have public participation and to hear their views as users on proposed policy and service changes.

On a separate note yesterday, we also discussed fostering and how we could encourage staff to consider being foster carers. We will be looking at an internally focused campaign as our marketing to recruit foster carers externally has been extremely successful and, we know we need even more carers to come forward – something to think about...

As we mentioned last week, the budget remains at the forefront of our discussions and current work plans. We have now arranged dates for the budget summit meetings - as mentioned in last week’s blog - with directors and cabinet members to talk through their plans for making savings and doing things differently. The budget and plans for delivering savings next year will be discussed at the staff forums which start next week in Trowbridge.

This week we are hosting an Employability Fair (taking place today) and the Wiltshire Assembly (Thursday) in the atrium at County Hall. The theme of the assembly is military integration and will include an update on the progress being made for the relocation of 4,000 Army personnel to the county from Germany making our county home to a quarter of the British Army by 2020. We continue to work closely with our MOD partners to integrate civilian and military communities to create vibrant, welcoming and supportive places where people want to live and work. The assembly has more than 100 attendees and they will be asked to pledge what they can do to assist with this integration and support for the troops and their families across the county.

Next week we will include an update on the peer review feedback and next steps.

Hope you all have a good week.

Alison, Alistair, Carlton and Terence