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