Elections and school admissions

Vote of confidence in our elections team

On Friday we formally published the notice of the European Parliamentary Election. It’s not something we had initially planned on having to do but obviously events at Westminster and beyond have brought us to this point. Even though there’s still a certain degree of doubt whether the election will actually take place, we have to follow the correct process and are working on the assumption it will happen. In short, that means we will be very busy until 26 May. We have to organise poll cards, polling stations and count venues and staffing, among many other actions. The election itself falls on a bank holiday weekend so that presents its own challenges, particularly as many people will have already made plans. It’s a real logistical headache but our hugely committed and passionate elections team are no strangers to working to tight deadlines. In 2017 the team successfully delivered local elections and a general election within the space of around five weeks. We are under no illusions the pressure we’ll be under but with plenty of support, and coffee, we should be ok.

An admission of success

Another busy team at the council at the moment is our school admissions service. They have the rather unenviable and very challenging task of allocating school places. This week it was the turn of primary schools. Just like elections, this is a hugely logistical process, and the result of which matters a great deal to many parents and carers. The team has once again done a great a job with 98% of families offered one of their top three preferences and 93% their first. The team is well aware of the responsibility they have as a child’s primary school education sets the foundations for the rest of their lives. We thank them for all their hard work.

Salisbury the place to be

We were delighted to see that Salisbury was named as the best place to live in the UK by

the Sunday Times. This is testament to everyone involved in helping the city recover from the incident last March and those communities who remained so resilient throughout. The city has taken great strides since then and with that in mind, we confirmed some changes to the current parking arrangements in the city this week. We now feel the time is right to end our ‘free after 3pm’ car parking initiative, but park and ride will remain free. Salisbury finds itself in a good place but we will continue to support the city and the south of the county as much as possible. We recently confirmed the OVO Energy Tour Series will be returning in May and we of course have the Armed Forces Day National Event in June, so there’s so much for the city to look forward to and many visitors to be welcomed to see the best place in the UK to live for themselves.

Looking forward to long weekend

We can’t quite believe we’re almost a quarter of the way through the year already. We probably sound like a broken record, but It’s been a particularly busy few months for everyone, so we hope that you have a relaxing long Easter weekend. Thank you as always to everyone on call or those having to work over the long weekend, we really appreciate your support.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence