The start of a new term awaits

Can you believe that next week will be ‘start of term’ as September arrives and we move into a busy and challenging end to this year?

Hopefully you’ve been able to take a break over the summer period and recharged as the calendar of council, team and project meetings resume. As the autumn approaches next year’s budget planning gets underway. This is an annual process but throughout the year we discuss delivery of savings and additional income with the extended leadership team and cabinet members. You may be aware of recent reports of other councils that have reported being at near-breaking point financially; whilst this is not the situation in Wiltshire, we recognise the value and need for careful and detailed plans and review.

Updates on next year’s (2018/19) budget will feature in our blog until it’s finalised in February. It’s important that everyone is aware of our overall financial situation as this is the basis of the context for many decisions that need to be made.

The autumn will also see public meetings being arranged that provide an opportunity for cabinet members to talk to local communities about the council’s vision, focus and the challenges that we face.

This week the Local Government Boundary Commission for England announced that it is ‘minded to’ recommend that Wiltshire Council retains its current number of councillors of 98 beyond the next elections in 2021. If this proposal goes ahead it doesn’t mean the status quo will remain as there are likely to be changes to electoral divisions.

We’d recommend you look at our electoral review pages which explain the process. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England are now publicly consulting on their conclusions and the Wiltshire Council Electoral Review committee are also looking for people’s views – and council staff are included in that. They can be emailed to committee@wiltshire.gov.uk.

Next week (Tuesday 4 September) marks six months since the incident in Salisbury. This milestone date is a focus for local and national media and BBC’s Inside Out programme on Monday (3 September) features Salisbury and how the city has coped and is moving forward.

On a lighter note you may have seen a story this past week about a woman who wrote a poem to appeal against a parking ticket. Our appeals officer replied with a poem of his own to confirm that her appeal had been successful (for legitimate reasons we should add, not just for her rhyming skills!). The woman was delighted with her reply and the good humour shown and the story was covered by national media, and there was also a lot of positive feedback across social media about how we handled this.  Sometimes it’s good that the public can see that the council is made up of real people with real personalities. It’s also good to see the parking team get a warm response as they work so hard and rarely get positive publicity.

We don’t think we’ll roll out any poetry training on grow any time soon - even though clearly that’s the way forward for positive customer interactions…

Have a good weekend

Alistair, Carlton and Terence