Next year's budget proposals and this week’s joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspection

Hello,

This week got off to a really busy start with the joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, the publication of the budget papers, and a cabinet meeting.

Ofsted and the CQC are conducting an inspection of the local area’s Special Education Needs and / or Disability (SEND) arrangements. The inspection team arrived at County Hall yesterday and will be with us until Friday. The inspectors will be visiting a number of sites, including schools and children’s centres, and also looking at health provision, meeting with parents, carers and children and young people as well as council and the clinical commissioning group senior leaders and staff. As we’ve said, these inspections are really important because they help us to improve our service and focus on areas where we need to do things differently, as well providing acknowledgement of where we are doing well.

As you’ll have seen, the proposals for next year’s budget have been published. A briefing for councillors takes place later today after the cabinet meeting, and a briefing for local media was held yesterday morning. In case you haven’t seen our budget briefing to staff, you can read it here.

At our meeting with cabinet members yesterday we discussed the new way of delivering services to schools. Right Choice... for your school, is the new name for our traded service and website which provides a single market place for all schools to view and purchase the products and services they need. It is being launched at engagement events with headteachers and business managers from all Wiltshire schools today and next week. This is a big change – all services to schools will be traded through a new platform from March 2018. Take a look at the website.

At today’s cabinet meeting the car parking strategy, school capital programme, school admissions policies, and a progress report on the adoption service, were discussed. Cabinet will also meet again next week with the focus being on next year’s budget. Our thanks go to Cllr Chuck Berry for his hard work as cabinet member for housing and economic development. He has chosen to stand down, so the responsibility for housing will be taken on by Cllr Richard Clewer and Baroness Scott will lead on economic development.

Last week we interviewed for the two director adult care posts for access and reablement and continued support and we are pleased to update that Emma Legg has been appointed as director adult care, access and reablement. Emma has been acting up into this role and we are delighted that we have been able to appoint her permanently. We have also taken steps to appoint to the role of director adult care, continued support and we hope to update you on progress with this soon.

This week we will be interviewing for the Children’s and Adult commissioning role. The second tier structure implementation is almost complete and we are looking forward to having the director posts in place and working together to deliver the programmes of work aligned to the business plan that were set out in yesterday’s budget briefing update.

Today Wiltshire welcomed HRH the Duchess of Cornwall to officially open St Mary’s C.E. School in Marlborough, which was built as part of the Government's Priority Schools Building Programme, with a contribution from us.

Finally, you can see our latest highlights presentation here.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence

Congratulations to Jane on making the LGC top 100 'power list'

Hello,

Yesterday Terence received the call from OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission, who informed him that they will be conducting an inspection of Wiltshire’s Special Education Needs and / or Disability (SEND) arrangements. The inspection will run from Monday 29 January to Friday 2 February. These inspections are a great opportunity for us to showcase all of the positive work we do with children, young people, and their families in Wiltshire. We’ll keep you updated on the visit and feedback from the inspection team.

This week, we are working with directors to finalise the budget proposals for 2018/19, we need to set out the timescales for delivering proposed savings, and the projected income. The final proposals will be published on Friday in readiness for the cabinet meeting on 7 February. Briefings for elected members and the media are scheduled for early next week ahead of formal discussions at Overview and Scrutiny, Cabinet, and finally Full Council on 20 February.

Last week we held the first meeting of the year with managers and heads of service in which we discussed our priorities for the year ahead, including the transformation programmes in children’s and adults’ services. We also discussed the boundary review, which is progressing this week, with a meeting of the Electoral Review Committee. The review is an important piece of work which is considering the total number of councillors; as well as the number and boundaries of electoral divisions within the council.

As you know, last week we interviewed for the post of director of education and skills, and we are awaiting confirmation following an offer of appointment. This week, tier 2 director recruitment continues, we will be interviewing for two adult care directors, and next week we will interview for the commissioning role.

Recruitment for the remaining corporate director post (the joint role with the clinical commissioning group) is being progressed.

In case you didn’t see it, Jane Scott was on BBC Sunday Politics West. The main focus was the changing role of libraries and how, with the support of 800+ volunteers, we are helping to protect this service and combat the growing issues around isolation and loneliness. Calne Community Hub and Library and its Open Access system were featured. If you missed it, the section can be accessed here. If you did watch the programme and saw the section on air quality, you may be interested to know that we are reviewing our policy. While this is a national issue, and one where there is no easy and accessible solution, we need to make sure that we, and our local communities, take action to make the air we breathe as clean as possible.

Last week, Jane was voted the 39^th most influential person in the public sector in the Local Government Chronicle’s latest Top 100 ‘power list’. This accolade is based on the council’s achievements and transformation programmes since it became a unitary in 2009. Jane said this recognition was not just an honour for her personally, but also for her cabinet and council staff who work so hard for the people of Wiltshire.

On the theme of recognition – this Thursday we will be presenting the final quarter Achieving Excellence Awards from 2017. This ceremony will include the regular team and individual awards and the individual and team ‘winner of winners’ for 2017 following your votes. We will publish all the winners on the Wire this Friday.

Finally, you can see our latest highlights presentation here.

Alistair, Carlton, and Terence

Current focus on recruitment and next year's budget

Hello,

As you may be aware our focus is currently predominantly on recruitment and next year’s budget setting.

Last week interviews for commercial and housing, and economic development and planning director’s posts were held. We were delighted that Tim Martienssen has been appointed as director of economic development and planning. Tim has been acting up into this role, and has now taken it on permanently with immediate effect.  Unfortunately, the appointment committee did not appoint to the commercial and housing role as it did not consider that the applicants were suitable. The position will be reviewed.

This week interviews for the director of education and skills, will be held and interviews for positions in adult social care and commissioning will follow next week. We will keep you updated on the outcome of these interviews. We will be pleased when all the roles are filled and we can work together as a new team to deliver the business plan and the big change programmes.

As we mentioned our other key focus right now is next year’s budget and we continue to work closely with cabinet members on the proposals for delivering the £25m of savings required and for meeting the increasing demand in some service areas. This is never an easy task and we will be a position to share these proposals with you soon, as they will be published by 29 January, in readiness for the cabinet meeting on 6 February. The final decision will be made by Full Council on 20 February.

Today we will be holding our first meeting of 2018 with managers and heads of service. We have decided to focus on a number of key areas, beginning with our priorities for this year, and the progress being made on some of our key transformation programmes – adult social care, and families and children.

At the end of last year we heard that our community hubs programme had been shortlisted in the Best Service Delivery Model category for the LGC Awards 2018. As part of the judging process, yesterday deputy leader John Thomson and Laurie Bell, director communities and communication, were invited to London to present to a panel of four chief executives what we have achieved and why Wiltshire should win the award. Their presentation focused on how visionary we have been, our innovative approach to community working, and how we are adopting a business-like approach to minimise the need for subsiding these facilities in the future. We’ll find out in mid-March whether they did enough to convince the panel!

You can see the latest highlights presentation here. 

Alistair, Carlton and Terence

2018 - a year of opportunity and delivery

Welcome back and happy New Year for 2018!

We hope you all managed to enjoy a well-earned break over the festive period and are ready for the New Year. Our thanks go to those staff who did a great job managing the impact of the extreme weather over the last couple of weeks.

As we said in our pre-Christmas blog, 2018 promises to be a year of opportunity and delivery and we’re pleased that interviews for the vacant director posts for economic development and planning, and commercial and housing are underway this week.

Over the next few weeks the interviews for the two adult social care directors; continued support, and access and reablement, as well as directors for commissioning, and education and skills will also take place.

We hope to appoint to these roles by early next month, but in the meantime, the following temporary arrangements have been put in place; 

• Graham Wilkin – interim statutory director, Adult Social Services (DASS)

• Emma Legg – acting director, adult social care 

• Evelyn Wheeler – interim director, commissioning 

• Alan Stubbersfield – interim director, skills and education

Our first meeting of the year with cabinet members took place on Monday. We discussed the cabinet meetings scheduled for 30 January and 6 February and the agenda items which include feedback on the consultation on the local transport plan and next year’s budget. 

As we previously updated, next year we need to find around £25m in savings to meet increasing demand in some services. On Monday we ran through proposals to deliver these savings. Whilst most of these have been accepted, more detail is required for some of the proposals put forward.

As you may have heard, the government has agreed that councils can now increase council tax by up to 3% without a referendum. The maximum used to be 2%, and the extra 1% could generate around £2.4m for the council, should members agree to this increase.

In terms of what happens next on the budget - all directors and heads of service will be sent base budgets to review shortly. The papers setting out the budget proposals will be published on 29 January, ahead of the cabinet discussion on 6 February, and a decision by full council on 20 February.

That might sound like a long process – but the reality is that when setting the budget there needs to be an appropriate level of scrutiny given the size of our budget and scale of services we deliver.

Whilst there is a lot of focus on next year’s budget, we still need to manage this year’s budget to ensure that it is balanced and that we continue to minimise any potential overspend. We are encouraging all managers to be vigilant in their approach to any recruitment and spend from now until April and to recognise that by being diligent we can achieve a balanced outcome.

This Friday we are hosting a visit from Gloucester City Council, that is keen to look at how we work, with a particular focus on our hubs and our programme of transformation following the move to unitary. With the budget challenges and service demands facing local authorities several have visited to look at rationalisation of property, flexible working and community working.

Finally, the EPIC staff engagement team launched the opportunity to deliver an EPIC Xmas impression. More than 1,000 impressions were sent over the Christmas period – an incredible response! We encourage you to make use of impressions to recognise and thank your colleagues for their work. If you haven’t sent one yet, EPIC has now launched new impressions focused on empowerment, innovation and collaboration. You can find out more about impressions here.

And the EPIC team is still looking for more volunteers, the deadline for applications is today. You can apply here.

Finally, the recent highlights are on the intranet.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence