Hello,
We are almost in the summer holiday period, and while this means that the number of meetings reduce, there is little sign of the organisation slowing down. The programme of work across service areas combined with the incidents in Amesbury and Salisbury is keeping us all busy.
On Tuesday evening a special community meeting was held in Salisbury to update local people on the investigation following the recent incident and on the recovery programme, and, most importantly, to provide an opportunity for local people to ask questions and raise their concerns with a panel of representatives including Alistair, Wiltshire Police and Public Health England.
About 200 members of the public attended and so far the live broadcast of the meeting (available on our Facebook page) has been seen around 7,500 times and this number is rising.
A special community meeting was also held last night, this time in Amesbury, to update the local community and to enable a question and answer session. This meeting was also broadcast live.
These meetings are a really important way of engaging with local communities, and gaining a better understanding of their concerns; particularly given the recent extraordinary events that have taken place and the ongoing media attention that these have generated.
Throughout the recovery phase we will be doing all we can to support the communities of Amesbury and Salisbury. We recognise that full recovery will take time and we need to support the local economy and wider community, both in the immediate aftermath of the incidents, and in the longer term. The government’s recent announcement of a further funding to provide immediate support enables us to continue to allocate grants and business rate relief to those affected during this difficult period.
The long-term plans to support the local economy have been discussed with central government and include accelerating local development and regeneration programmes to bring jobs and investment to the wider local community. We will update on this programme in future blogs.
This week the Officer Appointments Committee meets to consider two Tier 2 appointments -Education & Skills and Learning Disabilities & Mental Health. We’ll update you on the outcome of the interviews as soon as possible.
During the summer, the Families and Children’s Transformation team will be attending various family fun days to speak to parents and carers to better understand what’s important to them and how they want to be supported during times of need. You can have your say by going to our Families and children’s transformation survey 2018
Our Black, Minority, Ethnic Staff Network held their regular meeting this week with four guest speakers. Kerry Beety and Saeed Naizai told an inspiring story of a young refugee child's journey to the UK and how he found a loving new family through fostering; Hári Sewell, a management consultant and former NHS executive director, gave a motivational talk on making a positive impact in society; and senior democratic services officer Will Oulton spoke about the importance of blood donation and the need for more BME donors. Well done to everyone involved in organising and taking part in this event.
Just a reminder that the changes to recycling collections comes into effect next Monday with the aim of encouraging everyone to recycle more and reduce the waste collected. The team has done a great job raising awareness of the extra items you can now recycle and you can find out more on our website.
Finally, for those of you taking a break during the school holidays, enjoy some time off and if it’s a staycation fingers crossed the sunshine lasts!
Alistair, Carlton and Terence
Updates from Wiltshire Council's executive directors
Thursday, 26 July 2018
Monday, 9 July 2018
Amesbury update
As you’ll be aware the eyes of the world’s media are once again focused on Wiltshire following a major incident being declared in the early hours of Wednesday last week and last night we heard the tragic news that Dawn Sturgess had died as a result of coming into contact with the nerve agent Novichok.
Having a death occur in our local community; particularly in such extraordinary circumstances will undoubtedly affect local residents and we will continue to support them and our partners in any way we can whilst the police carry out their investigation into this dreadful crime.
A public meeting will be held in Amesbury tomorrow evening (Tuesday 10 July). Local and national partners will be attending to update and provide support and reassurance to the town. The Prime Minister has also committed support to helping the local communities of both Amesbury and Salisbury. Salisbury has shown such stoicism and resilience since the first incident occurred in March and we will continue to provide help, where it is needed, throughout this extremely difficult period for both of these local communities.
As we have said previously we need dedicated resource to support Amesbury and Salisbury and we recognise that we also need sufficient resource to continue to deliver council services and the important programmes that are vital to transforming how we work in the future. We are therefore discussing appropriate interim arrangements to ensure we have resource allocated where it is needed for the foreseeable future.
We will keep you updated you on the incident and recovery situation and please remember that the guidance from Public Health England remains that there is not a significant health risk to the wider public.
Last week cabinet met and discussed our improvement in adoption performance, future ownership of traveller sites, and housing provision in the county (an issue which will be discussed again at Full Council tomorrow).
We were really pleased that cabinet agreed a further investment of £1.2m for children’s services to help address the expected increase in demand for social care services in the coming years. The increase reflects a national trend and the funding will help provide additional social workers to meet the increasing demand and ensure we can achieve our ambitious plans to improve outcomes for children.
The hot weather looks set to continue and we fully appreciate that County Hall is extremely warm and at times we know it’s an uncomfortable working environment. The air handling system is under extraordinary pressure as a result of the continued high temperatures and some serious technical failures. We’re working to fix the problems and to review what system the building needs for the future. In the meantime, wherever possible consider working in other hubs, or from home whilst this matter is resolved.
And, we must just say a huge well done to senior corporate support officer Kartar Singh, who won the Local Government Challenge at last week’s LGA national conference. This is nothing short of an incredible achievement – for those who aren’t aware, the competition sees the best and brightest local government officers compete in a series of real-life events around the country. The final was held at the annual conference in Birmingham and Kartar really impressed the judges. Well done Kartar a great accolade for you and the council!
Alistair, Carlton and Terence
Having a death occur in our local community; particularly in such extraordinary circumstances will undoubtedly affect local residents and we will continue to support them and our partners in any way we can whilst the police carry out their investigation into this dreadful crime.
A public meeting will be held in Amesbury tomorrow evening (Tuesday 10 July). Local and national partners will be attending to update and provide support and reassurance to the town. The Prime Minister has also committed support to helping the local communities of both Amesbury and Salisbury. Salisbury has shown such stoicism and resilience since the first incident occurred in March and we will continue to provide help, where it is needed, throughout this extremely difficult period for both of these local communities.
As we have said previously we need dedicated resource to support Amesbury and Salisbury and we recognise that we also need sufficient resource to continue to deliver council services and the important programmes that are vital to transforming how we work in the future. We are therefore discussing appropriate interim arrangements to ensure we have resource allocated where it is needed for the foreseeable future.
We will keep you updated you on the incident and recovery situation and please remember that the guidance from Public Health England remains that there is not a significant health risk to the wider public.
Last week cabinet met and discussed our improvement in adoption performance, future ownership of traveller sites, and housing provision in the county (an issue which will be discussed again at Full Council tomorrow).
We were really pleased that cabinet agreed a further investment of £1.2m for children’s services to help address the expected increase in demand for social care services in the coming years. The increase reflects a national trend and the funding will help provide additional social workers to meet the increasing demand and ensure we can achieve our ambitious plans to improve outcomes for children.
The hot weather looks set to continue and we fully appreciate that County Hall is extremely warm and at times we know it’s an uncomfortable working environment. The air handling system is under extraordinary pressure as a result of the continued high temperatures and some serious technical failures. We’re working to fix the problems and to review what system the building needs for the future. In the meantime, wherever possible consider working in other hubs, or from home whilst this matter is resolved.
And, we must just say a huge well done to senior corporate support officer Kartar Singh, who won the Local Government Challenge at last week’s LGA national conference. This is nothing short of an incredible achievement – for those who aren’t aware, the competition sees the best and brightest local government officers compete in a series of real-life events around the country. The final was held at the annual conference in Birmingham and Kartar really impressed the judges. Well done Kartar a great accolade for you and the council!
Alistair, Carlton and Terence
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