Happy Christmas and thank you

Christmas has arrived!

Christmas has arrived! Across Wiltshire carol services have been taking place and it was wonderful to see so many staff at the hubs and with the community in the atrium at County Hall participating in the service this week. On Tuesday, the county’s civic carols by candlelight service was held at Malmesbury Abbey and it was the first time that Swindon Council and all our public sector partners joined together to celebrate Christmas. The evening was truly magical with the police band playing all the well-known carols and Christmas songs and the choirs of the Abbey and local Malmesbury primary school that sang their version of Walking in a Winter Wonderland and Hallelujah. Everyone enjoyed the event and it was both uplifting and a short quality space for some reflecting in the midst of busy diaries!

Yesterday (Thursday) Christmas came to the atrium as hundreds of people visited the annual Christmas Fayre. Over 40 businesses took part selling gifts and produce; these Wealth of Wiltshire Fayres are proving to be more and more popular with the demand for stalls far outweighing the space available. As you all know, I’m a great advocate of promoting the local economy and its always good to see small local businesses have the opportunity to market and sell their products. The Fayre was lively and a great event with local choirs and live reindeer and lots of activities for the younger visitors in the library. The atrium is such a good community space and it’s at its best on days like yesterday. I always had this vision that council buildings should be open to the community for everyone to enjoy and use and it is so good to see this vision become a reality.

It seems a long time since we became a unitary council and it was interesting to reflect on our journey at a round table discussion at the RSA (Royal Society for the Arts) in London with the Rt. Hon Lord Heseltine CH this week. The attendees included other local authorities, the Local Government Association, central government departments and leading policy researchers and developers. The focus was how local government can be reshaped to deliver economies of scale and promote growth and opportunities. Wiltshire was upheld as an example of delivering savings and improved services whilst working closely with local communities to enable and support them to do more for themselves. It will be interesting to see how local authorities tackle the continuing reduction in funding and how they will be forced to join up resources if they are to refrain from cutting services. Whilst we have challenges ahead we are in a much better place and our programme of transformation will continue to deliver savings and efficiencies into the future, which is a direct result of us becoming a unitary council.

This week I decided to speak to the press about the councillors allowances as I was becoming increasingly concerned that there was a lot of misleading and inaccurate information that was impacting on the council’s reputation and the great work that we do. The member’s allowances are recommended by an independent panel and were last looked at in 2009, when we became a new council. The panel admit that they got the allowances wrong at this time, and that the amount did not reflect or recompense for the level of responsibility that some councillors have. For example; at that time the area boards were new and the role to chair the boards was unknown. Four years on and the level of responsibility is much clearer and as such the allowance has been adjusted to reflect this. Similarly, four years ago the health reform had not taken place and there was no requirement to establish a Health and Wellbeing Board. The board is now established and is critical to delivering the integration of health and social care and ensuring that the health services that are required are provided across the county. It is anticipated that millions of pounds will come through the board to provide these critical services to meet the needs of people in Wiltshire, this is a huge responsibility and commitment for the post of chair. I am fully aware of some of the public’s perceptions surrounding this issue but I do feel strongly that we need to focus on the posts and the responsibilities and not the people currently in these posts. Full council approved the panel’s recommendations after considering their evidence and reasoning. I am of the view that if we are expected to be responsible for vital areas of work and to do what’s best for people we must ensure that this is fairly recompensed, especially if we want to encourage a diverse and representative council in the future. Can I just say thank you to the many of you who have been extremely supportive in what has been a difficult time.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your consistently hard work and unerring enthusiasm. It is your passion, energy, creativity and can-do attitude that makes my role so worthwhile. It’s your level of commitment that keeps us all focused on our vision and makes round table discussions – like yesterday – fill me with immense pride as I talk about the sheer scale of our achievements so far, and our plans to do even more in the future!

Thank you for all that you do…it is very much appreciated,

Jane

 Link to vine clip of Santa's reindeer