Hello everyone,
The last time I spoke to you it was at the end of a fantastic and extremely busy time for Wiltshire. Hopefully, you’ve all recovered from the excitement of this summer; the Olympics and Paralympics, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the events that we delivered here in Wiltshire to celebrate the Torch relay and the Jubilee. We always said that this year would provide the opportunity to create a legacy and at Cabinet on Monday, we agreed that to keep the momentum of 2012 going, with a key focus on boosting the economy, encouraging healthy lifestyles, working with our local communities and continuing to build on the great relationships that were established this year both within teams here and with our partners. We agreed to establish a Legacy Steering Board. The Board will deliver a programme of events, activities and support to ensure a tangible legacy is delivered for future generations to come in Wiltshire.
Well we’ve now moved into the newly refurbished County Hall and more of you are set to move in throughout autumn. It’s been amazing to see it take shape and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s looking really impressive and definitely has the wow factor. I’m confident that all of you who have the opportunity to work in the new offices will enjoy the new environment – feedback so far has been excellent. It’s a modern office that promotes flexible working and an open and far more communicative environment. I see more of you now and so do my cabinet members and it’s great to catch up and find out what’s happening without having to arrange meetings. It really is a different atmosphere and way of working.
As part of transforming County Hall, we officially opened the brand new Trowbridge library this week. The new library, which is located adjacent to the bright, airy atrium and great cafe, provides thousands of new books, computers for people to use, new DVDs and a fun children’s section. I think it’s a real achievement that not only have we managed to keep all Wiltshire’s libraries open but we’re also opening new state-of-the art libraries, and I would encourage all of you to visit the library and see what it has on offer. Customers visiting this week were so positive and I think it will be a really busy library and my thanks go to the libraries’ team for all their hard work to make this new facility so welcoming and exciting.
I know it’s too early to focus on Christmas, especially as we’ve only just got over a busy summer, but would you believe there’s 15 weeks to go! The reason I mention Christmas is that as a thank you to all of you, for your continued hard work, particularly throughout this year, when many of you took on other roles to support the events, or to keep services running in the offices, Christmas Eve will be an additional day of annual leave. I thought it would be useful to give you advanced warning, as I know many of you will already be thinking that far ahead already and will be planning holidays and emergency cover for our front line services.
I still can’t quite believe this summer is over and so are the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Our athletes have made us so proud and it’s great our own Wiltshire-based athletes have excelled. We've had confirmation already that Stephanie Millward, Paralympic five medal winning swimmer from Corsham, will be attending the official opening of County Hall on 1 November, along with Torch bearers who carried the torch through sixteen of our towns this summer. We are really hopeful, and are awaiting confirmation, that three other Olympic/Paralympic athlethes will be coming too. I will keep you all updated on what’s happening as this will be our next milestone in our major programme to transform the council and it will be a big event.
Jane
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