Keeping Wiltshire safe

This week’s blog has to start with a huge thank you to all of the teams who have been dealing with the impact of the most extreme cold weather that Wiltshire – along with many other parts of the country – has seen over the last few years.

Our gritters have travelled more than 13,000km, spreading 830 tonnes of salt across the county’s road network to keep people moving. All primary and secondary routes across the county have been treated, and were treated again from 6pm on Monday night. We will continue to monitor primary and secondary routes and treat where required. Please make sure you all take care on the roads, particularly on minor roads which are untreated.

It is a real team effort to keep Wiltshire safe during the very cold weather – it’s not just about salting roads – but, it’s also about ensuring the safety of the vulnerable, particularly those who may be sleeping rough. Our thanks to everyone who has been, and continues to be, involved and let’s hope it warms up again very soon!

Yesterday we met with cabinet members ahead of a very busy cabinet meeting today. We discussed the agenda and the various reports as well as the highlights from last week, which you can see on the intranet. 

We are making progress implementing the senior management structure, and our congratulations go to Tracy Daskiewicz who was appointed Director of Public Health following an interview with the Officer Appointments Committee on Friday. Tracy has been acting up into this role and will take it on permanently with immediate effect. We are sure you will join with us in congratulating Tracy and wishing her every success in the role.

We spent yesterday shortlisting for six of the other vacant director roles; commissioning (both children’s and adults), adult social care (two roles), education and skills, housing and commercial development, and economy and planning. We have had a good response to the recent advertisements and there are some really strong candidates. Interviews will take place in the New Year and we’ll keep you updated on the outcome of these interviews.

This week, we continue to work on next year’s budget setting; particularly as we await the Government funding announcement and its impact on us. We have scheduled to meet with directors this Thursday to further review the savings proposals and the opportunities to generate additional income in each service area.

Could we please remind you all, that if you haven’t yet voted for the Achieving Excellence Winner of Winners for 2017 (as shown at the recent staff forums) please cast your vote. The video which was can be found on the intranet along with details of how to vote. We are still finalising the answers to all your staff forum questions – there were 358 questions in total – and, as we promised we will answer each one and publish them all. Given there were so many this is taking some time, so please bear with us.

Finally, we wanted to talk about Lorraine Brown, who sadly lost her son Alex in a motor bike accident on 10 August this year. Alex was only 21 years old. Since the accident planning and building control team members have been fund raising in his honor and have so far managed to raise over £2,000 for the Wiltshire Air Ambulance, which tried to save Alex. The team has raised this money through cake sales, raffles and completing the Monster Race in September (as pictured).

More next week, just ahead of the Christmas break.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence