Friday 23 November 2012

What a week of dreadful weather! I hope you’ve all remained safe and dry and haven’t encountered too many floods or fallen trees or difficult journeys around the county. I’d like to thank our highways and emergency planning teams who always pull out all the stops when this sort of challenge comes our way. The local resilience team, which is made up of all the key emergency services, working with our teams, has been meeting and working through the day and night to provide support, advice and information for our communities via the local media, twitter feeds and our website.

I started this week in Stoke on Trent, attending the County Councils Network (CCN) Conference 2012, which was hosted by Staffordshire County Council. It’s always interesting to get together with leaders and chief officers from other authorities and to find out that we’re ahead of the game in a lot of what we do. The main focus was around the financial pressures facing local authorities and it was clear from Eric Pickles, when he spoke, that the pressure is set to continue into the future and that central government views local government as the most efficient sector and that means more reductions are likely! There was also some discussion about Lord Heseltine’s report; No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth and his recommendation that the way forward is unitary councils. Whilst there is clear evidence that merging two-tier government into unitary councils saves money and delivers efficiencies, it is unlikely that this recommendation will be taken forward in the short term.

What is clear is that every authority is tackling rising costs as a result of the growth in older people and the rising number of children needing care and support. It was, however, enlightening to hear about the good practice in other councils and I am extremely keen that we follow up and see what we could learn and maybe adopt in Wiltshire.

The conference was held at the new national football centre and given my passion for football I was really disappointed not to have had the opportunity for a good look around.

I came back from Stoke in time to attend a safeguarding forum. These are always informative and interesting and it’s good to meet our practitioners and managers and to gain a better understanding of the issues they face. So much work is being undertaken to improve safeguarding and the team is working really hard to deliver the action plan following the Ofsted inspection and to be ready for the peer review of this service in January.

I also met the newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner, Angus McPherson on Tuesday to talk about his role and how we will continue to work with the Police. I am personally pleased that Angus was elected as I worked with him when he was a member of the Police Authority. He understands our vision and where the council is heading and I’m looking forward to discussing how we can share services and facilities in the future.

I was delighted to see so many of you at the rescheduled staff forum in Chippenham on Wednesday morning. It was one of the longest question and answer sessions we’ve had, but some very relevant and important issues were raised including the new ways of working and the challenges we face of becoming a totally paper less organisation.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of you in Devizes on 4 December at the Corn Exchange and at the depots on 29 November in Devizes, 13 December in Chippenham, and 20 December in Salisbury.    

In my last blog I mentioned the video from the opening of County Hall. It's now available to view here.

I’m in France for a couple of days with the family helping Ron to recuperate. See you next week.

 Jane.