Paying respects to a great cabinet member to serve under

A sad goodbye to a great man

Jerry Wickham, who sadly passed away on 23 July

We were extremely saddened to hear that former cabinet member Jerry Wickham passed away this week.

Jerry was very open about his diagnosis of prostate cancer, but he did not let this illness define him.  He was defined by his integrity, values and his skill as a cabinet member. He was a brilliant councillor to serve under and will be terribly missed by all who knew him.

Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers among men and robs so many people of their loved ones. Jerry was always so keen to raise awareness and prevent other people having to go through what he had, so if you need any advice and support please visit the Prostate Cancer UK website.

Our thoughts are with Jerry’s wife Suzanne, their sons, and his family and friends at this very sad time.


‘Good’ rating is GREAT news for our children’s services

The children's services team celebrate their success

Following years of commitment and hard work from our staff, we were delighted to get confirmation that our children’s social care services are rated ‘Good’ in all areas by Ofsted – the first authority in the South West to achieve this. It can’t be understated how hard the team has worked to make improvements to the service and get this fantastic recognition. We are outstanding in places, and where we need to improve we have already made steps to achieving that goal. 

Among the many highlights, the report notes:

• Senior leaders and frontline practitioners are driven by a determination to improve the life chances of children in Wiltshire
• Children in care and care leavers receive a good service in Wiltshire
• Responses to children from domestic abuse are effective and decisive action taken by social workers to protect children when required
• Social workers have manageable workloads following significant investment to increase numbers 
• Social workers are given the time they need to work purposefully with families and children
• The arrangements for finding children adoptive parents is a strength and children in Wiltshire are waiting less time than ever to move in with their adoptive family

Getting the basics right is fundamental and provides a solid platform for our work, the investment we have made in good practice and social work values has led to better lives for children and families across Wiltshire. We couldn’t be prouder of this achievement.

We gathered as many members of the children’s services team together on Monday as we could to tell them the good news and the atmosphere was fantastic. You can read the full report on the Ofsted website and it makes for great reading.

The staff we have are the key to this success and our aim now is to continue to be a progressive, supportive and learning organisation. Thanks so much to everyone involved.


Big step forward for our digital programme 

Cutting the ribbon on Val

It’s been a busy week for our digital programme team with the launch of our first virtual assistant, Val, within the payroll team.

Val went live on Wednesday 17 July and has automated the distribution of payroll output reports – effectively running a series of six reports for each of our 43 payrolls.

This used to require a significant amount of repetitive keying for staff, taking up one-two days per month and creating bottlenecks in a time-critical process. Now, with Val on board, this takes just over an hour, not only freeing up staff time, but also reducing pressure and giving us capacity and confidence to take on more payrolls, which supports our commercial agenda.

Virtual assistants represent a significant step forward in our digital transformation. They are changing the way we work, both at an individual and organisational level, making it simpler, quicker and easier for our customers and staff to access our services.

As this is a new technology we have been learning as we go, and it has not been as smooth or easy as we initially thought. However, the teams involved have worked tirelessly to get to this point.

We would like to thank all the teams involved, both from the digital programme itself, the Payroll team and all the other teams that are working with the digital programme to identify opportunities and help us achieve our vision.

To find out more about our first virtual assistant, please watch this video. 

We have seven other processes currently in build phase (six in HR&OD and one in planning) and these will be released over the coming months. Discussions are ongoing with other services; if you think your service has a suitable process that could be automated, which is high volume, rule-based and repetitive, please contact digitalprogramme@wiltshire.gov.uk.


Council and Police IT to go separate ways

Cabinet took place this week, the first chaired by new leader Philip Whitehead. It was a busy agenda and one of the items was the decision for ourselves and Wiltshire Police to separate our IT infrastructure. This joint decision by both organisations, will allow the police to align with the Police Vision 2025 digital programme, which requires nationally consistent IT systems for the police service, and will enable them to have better access to national police IT infrastructure programmes.

We will work together over the next year to manage this transition carefully and ensure there is minimal disruption to both organisations. Wiltshire Police is one our major partners and although our IT services are separating, we will continue to have a strong partnership with them going forward.

You can catch up with the cabinet webcast online.

School’s out for summer

This academic year seems to have flown by and the school holidays are now here. As a council we put on a host of activities throughout the break to keep the kids entertained. Among others, our leisure services and libraries team have lots planned including the Get Active programme and this year’s space-themed Summer Reading Challenge. We know it can be a tricky time of year to think of things to do so please keep an eye on the Wiltshire Council website for some great ideas.

It's been a particularly busy first half of the year, so for those of you having some time off over the coming month or so, we hope you get a chance to recharge the batteries and this week’s warm weather sticks around a little longer.

Alistair, Carlton and Terence