Friday 25 January

Hello

I hope you all managed to cope with the icy and snowy conditions this week and, if like me, you need to travel around the county - it’s certainly been a challenge. I would, however, like to thank the teams who have worked tirelessly battling through this bad weather to clear the main roads and to deliver our critical front line services; particularly to those who are vulnerable. The feedback from Wiltshire residents has been amazing; I have received lots of thank you letters and compliments about our teams and they reflect the hard work and commitment that you demonstrate in your work and are totally deserved.

The winter response team has been working around the clock and using social media as a main channel to get messages out to local communities. The number of Twitter followers has now exceeded 3,000 for Wiltshire Council and almost 1,600 for Wiltshire Winter. People expect instant real time communication especially when incidents such as bad weather affect them. Social media is instant and effective. If you don’t tweet already – maybe you should, and that includes me!

Monday was an exciting day as we had the first of the budget roadshows around the county, kicking off outside County Hall. I hope the road shows will provide a real insight into what members of the public consider we have done well in our first four years as a unitary council, and what they say we can improve on. This will help with setting next year’s budget and plans for the future. The budget proposals will be presented at council meeting on 26 February. Unfortunately, due to weather conditions we had to postpone the road shows in Salisbury and Marlborough. The rescheduled dates and a full list of all the road shows are on the website.

We also launched the stay safe, be seen campaign this week. Several primary schools have been visited and this campaign has attracted positive media interest. Working with NHS Wiltshire, the police and the fire and rescue services, we’re giving away high visibility flashing and reflective armbands to all years 5 and 6 primary school children in Wiltshire. The bands are also available from fire stations across the county for dog walkers, cyclists, runners and anyone else needing to be seen in the dark. You can find out opening times of fire stations on the website.

We had an interesting cabinet meeting on Tuesday. One of the agenda items was an update on how our adoption service is improving. Following last year’s Ofsted inspection we have made a number of improvements including introducing a home-finder post, which has helped to reduce the time it takes to place a child with a loving family. We always focus on getting the right family for a child and avoid quick-fix solutions which can end in the breakdown of a placement. Here in Wiltshire these breakdowns, which are extremely damaging for the children and the adopters, happen relatively rarely due to the approach we take and our determination to place a child in a suitable home. We will continue to deliver improvements and safeguarding children and meeting their needs is a top priority.

The waste sites local plan, which outlines suitable sites for clean and modern waste treatment facilities, was approved and will go to full council for final adoption in February. We also agreed to provide our housing tenants with the opportunity to be involved and make decisions on the council’s housing service. The Localism Act has made a number of changes to the way council housing is financed and funding is available to improve the housing stock. We approved setting up a board which will include housing tenants, to manage our council housing and make decisions on what needs to be done and what’s a priority for improvement.

Following cabinet I chaired the capital assets committee which discussed and agreed some key decisions that will improve local communities. These included transferring Trowbridge Town Hall to a community group who intend to turn the building into an arts and dance centre; making a bid to central government to address the bottleneck on the A350 in Chippenham (outside Chippenham Golf Club) by extending the dual carriageway; and agreeing extension plans for Tidworth school.

On Wednesday, I was in London presenting to the LGC awards panel. I mentioned before that we have been shortlisted for four national awards. A panel of judges for each category will meet all those shortlisted to decide the winner. Julie Anderson Hill and I presented on our transformation programme and they seemed suitably impressed and asked if they could visit County Hall – so fingers crossed – we will find out in March if we have won. Three other teams will be presenting on our campus programme, help to live at home project and our energy efficiency eco programme. I wish them all luck and hope they do well and thank you to everyone involved in presenting and persuading the judges that we should win for our outstanding work!

Today is an early start as I am attending the Wessex Chamber of Commerce business breakfast near Bradford on Avon. The speaker is Angus Macpherson – the new Police Crime Commissioner who will talk about his police and crime plan that he has to publish by April this year. It includes sharing resources and facilities with other public sector organisations and I have no doubt he will use Monkton Park as a good example of how this can be achieved. I also want to say how much we are looking forward to welcoming everyone to County Hall next month as we have agreed to host the February business breakfast in the atrium.

After breakfast I am off to Salisbury for a regular update meeting with the hospital. These meetings are always useful to review how we work with the health service particularly with the changes that are happening.

I end this week spending the evening with the 3rd Yorkshire Regiment in Warminster. The regiment has recently returned from Afghanistan and will be giving a presentation on that tour. I will be attending with Christine Crisp, the council’s chairman. These occasions are always poignant and emotional as we recognise the commitment and endurance of our forces.

More next week and let’s hope that the big thaw that’s forecast for the weekend does not result in flooding in our communities, but I know if that happens our teams will be on hand to assist and support those affected.

Jane.