It was wonderful to be back in Wiltshire yesterday for the official opening of the refurbished County Hall. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who asked me how Ron was and I am pleased to update that he is recovering well and is expected to leave hospital today. Thank you for all your good wishes and I have to say I will be pleased to be back home and back at work and not living out of a suitcase and hotel room.
I have, however, been keeping in touch and I watched Panorama on Monday night and found it very upsetting, as I’m sure many of you did. I would like to reiterate the message that went out following the programme that we take all safeguarding matters extremely seriously and we continually review our procedures. Our priority is to do all we can to protect and support the most vulnerable in our communities.
As I mentioned, I came back to County Hall yesterday (Thursday) for the official opening. Lots of people – around 250 – attended the event, which was held in the atrium, and I hope some of you had the opportunity to see the Olympic and Paralympic medal winners and the future Olympians, who did some fantastic displays including rhythmic gymnastics and judo. It was wonderful to see all the torchbearers who carried the torch through Wiltshire this summer in the atrium, in their distinctive white tracksuits carrying their torches and to welcome all the games makers who assisted at the London 2012 Games. The opening provided us with a great opportunity to say thank you to all our local communities for making this year such an outstanding success. I also thanked all the Wiltshire Olympic and Paralympic athletes and future champions for giving us such a sense of pride in our county and country and giving us the motivation to create a lasting legacy. The event brought our communities together to relive a little of this unique and special year and it was so good to see everyone enjoying the memories.
I was also really pleased to welcome Baroness Hanham, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government, who assisted with the opening as part of her visit to Wiltshire to find out more about how we are transforming our building portfolio, working flexibly and helping communities to drive and design the campus programme. She was very impressed and said we were definitely a trail blazer and an innovative council. She said the newly refurbished County hall building had the “wow” factor and she was very interested in the campus programme and enjoyed her visit to Corsham to hear how their plans are progressing and to the Studio Hall in the Olympiad to see a multi-use space being used for the benefit of adults with learning difficulties and young people. I’d like to thank all those who were involved in making yesterday such a success and for organising the programme and hosting the Baroness.
I hope many of you will take the opportunity to have a look at our first public exhibition in the atrium. As I mentioned last week Salisbury City Council has kindly loaned us their Olympic Torch as the centre piece for the gallery of Wiltshire torchbearers.
Next Tuesday we have a cabinet meeting at Monkton Park. We will be discussing a number of items including the integration of public health, an update on the public health transition, the future of the waste management service and a paper on volunteering in Wiltshire.
Some of you may have seen the publicity on Wednesday about the release of Lord Heseltine’s ‘No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth’ report, which sets out a number of recommendations about how to boost the country’s economy. The report looks at opportunities for economic growth and also highlights the benefits of unitary councils. We are included in the report (pages 51- 52) as a case study which recognises that our radical changes have really benefitted our communities and businesses. Lord Heseltine also states that we are in a much stronger position to support future economic growth in the county. He particularly highlights that the transitional costs of creating Wiltshire Council were £18 million compared to saving £68 million between 2009 and 2013 and that our back office costs are now 9% of our budget, opposed to 19% for the five former councils.
He goes on to talk about how we’ve already delivered procurement savings of £36 million and that our customers find accessing services considerably easier.
I am pleased that we are featured as I have always been a firm believer and advocate for doing what is right for the people of Wiltshire and we knew that creating a unitary council would save money, improve services and provide an opportunity to do things differently. I think Baroness Hanham would agree that we definitely do things differently!
I’m looking forward to being back next week and seeing you all.
Jane
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