Temperatures tumble this week

Hello,

It feels like there’s only one place to start this week, and without wishing to state the obvious, it’s very cold!

Our Emergency Planning team is in regular contact with the MET Office and is closely monitoring the situation. We’ve put in place a number of measures, both internally and externally, to make sure we can maintain service delivery and keep people safe during the forecasted extreme weather.

We appreciate that if the forecast is accurate for the end of this week, that some of you may find it difficult to get to work. We’ve taken the decision today to cancel our regular meeting with managers and heads of service tomorrow due to the bad weather, and would ask that all managers check their business continuity plans. If you are affected, please discuss with your manager the options available for you to work from home or remotely. If this isn’t possible, managers have the discretion to authorise paid or unpaid leave, or making up the time. Please refer to the Time off for exceptional circumstances (severe weather) policy.

For those less fortunate, the predicted extreme weather will be particularly difficult. We have put in place our severe weather emergency provisions and we have a statutory duty to provide help to anyone sleeping rough especially when the weather is predicted to fall to 0 degrees or below for three consecutive nights. More details can be found here.

It’s important when people do need to contact us – particularly in an emergency – that it is easy as possible for them to do so and the price of a call is reasonable. Numbers beginning 0845 can be very expensive to call and we’ve instigated an urgent review of their use as we are aware that some services are still using these numbers. We will be encouraging people to use the customer services number (0300 456 0100) and look at discontinuing the use of any numbers which charge people extra. We are looking at interim solutions where we cannot stop using 0845 numbers immediately.

Staff working in Trowbridge today will be aware there has been a major leak on the second floor of old County Hall due to the cold weather. The heating in this area was turned off for some time so it will take a while before the whole of old County Hall is back to normal temperature. We would urge you to avoid this area and make use of hot desking areas elsewhere in the building, or discuss working from home with your manager. Our apologies go to those staff affected by the disruption.

We’ll provide a further update next week – until then, stay warm!

Alistair, Carlton and Terence

An update from Full Council

Today is Full Council and this morning councillors debated and agreed the budget for 2018/19. This included the proposals to save £25 million to fund the increased demand in services; particularly in adult and children’s social care and to increase Council Tax and the Social Care Levy by a total of 5.99%. (Please see our separate message about this here on The Wire.

Members will discuss this afternoon the draft recommendation of the council’s electoral review committee to increase the number of Wiltshire councillors from 98 to 99. The draft recommendations will go to the Local Government Boundary Commission for a decision on the number of elected members that this council should have. Any changes won’t take effect until the next full council election, in 2021. We will update on the outcome in next week’s blog.

Whilst this week there is inevitably a great deal of focus on the budget, we have also discussed with cabinet members (at our weekly meeting yesterday) the Wiltshire Local Plan refresh (updating the Wiltshire Core Strategy to 2036). The discussion focused on how we align future growth - both housing and business - to the council’s aspirations set out in its ten year Business Plan. This needs to include all public sector services – what will be needed and where these will be located; such as health services, police and fire, and how we will work with these partners and others, including the MoD to make sure that we provide the housing, infrastructure and community facilities that Wiltshire needs in the future.  This is a major programme of work for the council and cabinet members will take an in-depth look at the Local Plan Refresh programme of work on the 12 March to agree the next steps.

As you are aware we have a number of other major programmes of work underway. These focus on transforming key services; adults and children’s, implementing digitisation and becoming more commercial. We are also focusing on what more communities can do and where they may be best placed to deliver services and facilities locally.

These programmes form part of the budget proposals being discussed today, as they are all projecting to deliver significant savings. Our programmes to transform how we deliver services were also covered in last year’s peer review, and the peer review findings and recommendations will be published soon. The feedback has helped us to focus on an action plan to deliver improvements and we look forward to sharing this with you shortly.

Finally for this week;

We are pleased to update that we will be hosting the 2018 LGA Local Government Challenge in April. Local government officers compete in a series of real-life challenges and are tasked with problem solving to come up with innovative solutions to the challenges faced by local government. We have been asked to set a challenge which is likely to be around one of our transformation programmes. The LGA allocates a scholarship of £10,000 to the winner and we hope that Kartar Singh (senior corporate policy officer), as one of this year’s contestants, will enjoy the experience and learning and maybe win the scholarship!

And, some of you may be aware that Michael Hudson, director of finance and procurement and the council’s statutory Section 151 officer has announced that he will be leaving Wiltshire Council after seven years to take up the role of director of finance with Worcestershire County Council, which is near to where he lives. During his seven years Michael has ensured that the council has successfully managed its finances including the pension fund, treasury management activity, revenues and benefits and has ensured that a balanced budget has been set and delivered each year despite the significant financial challenges we have faced throughout this period. We would like to thank Michael for this. Michael will leave in May and I am sure you will all join us in wishing him well in his new role. Steps to recruit a replacement for Michael will take place shortly.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence.

#CleanUpWilts and a new director of commissioning

Hello,

Next week the budget for 2018/19 will be finalised following a thorough process. The proposals have been reviewed by Overview and Scrutiny and the committee’s considerations will be submitted to council members to include in their discussion and deliberations. Last week the Government announced additional funding for local authorities. We estimate that we will receive around £1.3m for adult social care services and £665,000 from the Rural Grants fund. This additional funding is welcome given the pressure to find £25m of savings. 

As well as the budget, next week full council will discuss the boundary review and proposals which could have an impact on the number of elected members that will make up the council in the future. It will be an important meeting, and you can view it live on the web feed (Tuesday, 20 February) – it’s always good to see democracy in action and listen to members debating the issues that affect the council; particularly the allocation of funding for the services we deliver.

Talking of funding, each year we spend more on clearing up dropped litter. Currently it’s around £2.5m, which is totally avoidable. Phase 2 of the #CleanUpWilts campaign launched this week with roadshows taking place across the county. The aim is to raise awareness, achieve a shift in behaviour and reduce the amount of litter by encouraging people to dispose of litter responsibly. Thousands of people have signed up as part of a local community group to take part in the Great British Spring Clean in March to tackle hot spots in their area. Last week we were finalists in the Clean Up Britain national awards for the work that our local communities do to improve Wiltshire – a great accolade to all the volunteers who give their time and support. 

We’re pleased to update that last week we appointed Helen Jones to the post of director for commissioning. Unfortunately, we have not been able to confirm the recruitment of the director of education and skills. The post will be re-advertised and we will keep you updated.

Last week Terence, along with other directors for children’s services from around England, met with the children’s minister Nadhim Zahawi and civil servants to discuss the Government’s plans for schools, education and social care. It was a very useful and informative meeting.

We’re are big advocates of the coaching programme and we’re pleased to say there is an opportunity for six staff to become trained coaches within the council coaching pool. This will involve undertaking the ILM Level 5 qualification in coaching and mentoring and committing to coach council staff in addition to your current role. For further information and an application form please see Becoming a Coach on grow. The closing date for applications is Monday 19 February 2018. It’s a great opportunity, and for both the coach and those who are coached it’s very worthwhile. 

Having just been through an Ofsted inspection that focused on our special educational needs & disabilities services (SEND), we’re expecting the draft letter from Ofsted in the next couple of weeks with the initial feedback. Starting next week another inspection is taking place, and a different area of our work will be looked at. Over the next 14 weeks the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will be reviewing the health and adult social care system in Wiltshire. CQC will send a team to visit us on two occasions and they will also be collecting an extensive amount of data and information as part of the process. It gives an opportunity for us and our health partners to show how effective our system is and how we are integrating these services. 

As we always say, the feedback helps us to make improvements to the services we provide.

More next week.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence

Strategic partnerships and the next phase of the Clean Up Wilts campaign

Hello,

The budget proposals, published just over a week ago, are currently being considered by members. Yesterday Overview and Scrutiny Management Committee discussed the proposals and will re-convene this week on Friday (9 February) to consider amendments put forward by opposition groups. Cabinet met this morning and the proposed budget and new Commercial Strategy were the main items discussed. Having taken into account the feedback from yesterday’s overview and scrutiny meeting, cabinet agreed that the proposals go forward to Full Council for its consideration on Tuesday, 20 February. The announcement from Government on the Revenue Support Grant and what we will be allocated is expected this week. We can then assess the impact, if there is any, on the budget proposals for next year.

Thank you to everyone who assisted with the joint Ofsted and Care Quality Commission inspection of Wiltshire’s special education needs and / or disability (SEND) arrangements last week. Our thanks again to all of you who demonstrated your responsiveness and commitment to work together to deliver what was needed.

Well done to everyone who was involved in our bid for more than £8.5m from the Government to support the construction of the Yarnbrook West Ashton Relief Road which will help deliver 2,600 new homes in the area. Last week we found out we’d been successful in securing this funding, which will pay for the additional ecological protection, design and construction costs. This includes improvements to the A350 road layout adjacent to the site. The funding will enable the delivery of the strategic housing allocation in this area.

This week consultation on proposals for the A303 Amesbury to Berwick Down (Stonehenge Scheme) will be launched. This is a major milestone and another step closer to a scheme which aims to protect the World Heritage Site and alleviate the traffic issues on this major arterial route and in local communities. We are working closely with Highways England and our partners to deliver this major project.

On the theme of partners, our strategic partnership with the police is a really important one, particularly given our close working and shared space. Last week we met with the police senior management team to discuss how we can further develop our joint working. It was a very wide ranging meeting which included discussion about high frequency contacts, our transformation programmes, shared space, safeguarding, budgets, future plans, and also how we can collectively celebrate our success as we move forwards.

It’s always good to get recognition for a job well done. We heard at the end of last week that our community hubs programme has been shortlisted for a Public Finance Innovation Award in the community engagement category. Well done to the team involved – we’ll find out whether we win towards the end of April. And, later this week we’re a finalist at the Keep Britain Tidy Awards following our successful community litter picks as part of the Great British Spring Clean. Fingers crossed…

Next week phase 2 of our Clean up Wilts campaign launches with roadshows in Tidworth, Salisbury (two roadshows), Trowbridge, Chippenham and Devizes.

This phase focuses on encouraging people to stop dropping litter; particularly from their vehicle, to switch to reusable materials, to recycle more, and to sign up to join this year’s community litter picks as part of the Great British Spring Clean. The campaign aims to reduce the cost to collect this litter – currently we spend £2.5 million picking up rubbish. Given the pressures and demands on our budget this money could be better allocated to support vital services. The campaign is currently supported by Landmarc, Spire FM, McDonald's and Salisbury City Council and Idverde. It is hoped more businesses will get involved and help us to combat this issue that has a detrimental impact on the environment and wildlife, and our budget.


Alistair, Carlton and Terence