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