Sad to see Jerry leave cabinet

Sad to see Jerry leave cabinet

We were very sad to hear that Jerry Wickham has decided to step down from the council’s cabinet team due to ill health. We have all worked closely with him over the last few years and no matter what your political allegiances are, you can’t argue that Jerry took his responsibilities very seriously and worked so hard for the council and community he served.

Jerry has been particularly instrumental in the work we’ve undertaken to transform our adult social care services and bridging the gap between health and social care. Jerry has been very open and honest about his prostate cancer since his diagnosis three years ago and regularly used his public platform admirably to advise men to look out for the signs and prevent more cases.

Even last week, following his announcement and the difficult time he is going through with his family, Jerry took time out to speak to the Gazette and Herald about his condition, and that says a lot about him. We wish Jerry and his family all the best and our thoughts are with them.

Baroness Scott to step down

This week, Jane confirmed that she will step down as leader following 16 years in the role. She was appointed the leader of the then Wiltshire County Council in 2003 and when the authority moved to unitary status in 2009 she was voted to lead the new organisation.

Jane was instrumental in leading the council into unitary status in 2009 and there have been so many achievements over the past 16 years. We look forward to celebrating these over the next few months.

We are all sorry to see Jane go, but we are also looking forward to working closely with the new leadership team.

Ofsted calling

We have just heard today (24 May) Ofsted will be carrying out an inspection of our children’s services teams from next week.

We have been expecting the call and although this will be a very busy time, we are ready to present the wide range of work our teams carry out with dedication, commitment and professionalism every day. The inspectors will be reviewing our work from next week and they will then be visiting our hubs from Monday 3 June to gain a real insight into the work we do. The next three weeks are going to be busy for the teams so please bear this in mind and as we may have said before – please be ready to make them a coffee too!

We’ll report back on how this is going next week.

Election nearly counted

This week marks the culmination of a lot of hard work and many late nights for our elections team. Despite the tight timescales and pressure, the team loves the hustle and bustle involved at this stage and the responsibility they have. Wiltshire is only one cog in the South West region, so we won’t actually be formally declaring any results ourselves, instead we’ll be feeding our results through to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council to announce the results. We hope you managed to vote yesterday (23 May), and thank you to the many people who worked during the day and also those who worked through until the early hours of this morning today for the verification. An early thank you also to those taking time out of a bank holiday weekend to participate in the count on Sunday. We are very grateful to all of you.

Plenty of discussion in the chamber

Tuesday and Wednesday were dominated by full council and cabinet respectively. At full council, members voted in a new chairman and that responsibility now lies with James Sheppard for 2019/20. The bulk of the meeting was taken up by the important task of members being allocated to the various council committee meetings.

Our vision for the future of special educational needs was the main issue discussed at cabinet. Rightly the process for the proposals to reach this point has been detailed and thorough, as it’s absolutely vital we get this right. We have met and spoken to many very passionate and knowledgeable parents and school representatives as part of this work and are grateful for their time in ensuring we have views from all perspectives. Cabinet agreed to establish a new maintained special school with an executive leadership team for Rowdeford, St Nicholas and Larkrise no later than 1 September 2021 and for a new school to be created on the Rowde site by September 2023.  Larkrise and St Nicholas will stay in use on the current sites until the new provision is ready and it is appropriate for pupils to transition to the new school campus at Rowdeford. We will be investing a significant amount of money in the new school and we’re confident it will meet the needs of all who go there. We knew whichever option was decided upon would have an impact on families and we will continue to work closely with them during this transition, as this is not the end of the process by any means.

Excitement down in Salisbury

On the same day as the European election, Salisbury city centre was transformed as professional cycling came back to Salisbury in the shape of the OVO Energy Tour Series. The city’s historic streets were lined with crowds cheering on these incredible athletes. What a great event! We also released the tickets for the Armed Forces Day National Event last week and we have been very pleased with the response so far. We’re now just over a month away and there are still plenty more exciting announcements coming soon, including the headlining acts. Keep an eye on the Twitter feed and website for all the latest news.