Page content section :
Chief Executive's Office
Message from the Chief Executive :
Adur
District and Worthing Borough Councils’ joint work took a giant step
forwards at the turn of the financial year. As part of the creation of our
shared officer structure, at the end of March, we said farewell to a number
of Adur and Worthing staff who had given good service to both councils. The
process of saying thank you and goodbye often leads us to look back and reflect.
This is a natural response to the lifecycle of any organisation and is an
important part of the shared journey we are on in working for the two councils.
At the beginning of April the new management team and support staff for the two authorities took up their new appointments as joint staff of Adur District and Worthing Borough Councils. At the first meeting of the new management team, just a day later, I was struck at how different this felt. We spent our meeting almost entirely in looking forward and seeking the solutions to the many issues we have to deal with over the coming years, rather than identifying barriers.
And over recent months our elected members have become highly strategic and motivated about the partnership. They have taken some highly significant decisions in giving us the tools to manage the change process in a sympathetic and efficient way. Adur members and officers have put in a huge amount of work to devise a new constitution to accompany the council’s move to cabinet governance.
Both sets of members have become highly confident in the path we are on and very receptive to any discussion of standardising our respective working arrangements and the potential for quite radical solutions.
Pleasingly, the world of local government is catching up with us on the merits of our approach to partnership working. Many other councils are looking at shared management arrangements now and the lessons from what we have done are much in demand. Whilst this is satisfying as an acknowledgement of what we have achieved so far it is also something of a reassurance that our groundbreaking work has delivered something of wider use and as a result we may feel less out on a limb.
Finally, it should also be remembered our partnership activity has achieved real cashable savings in the new budget year and in our financial plans over the next few years to achieve the government’s efficiency targets set by the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR07).
I look forward to working with all staff and members to deliver our partnership project and to continue our delivery of better services to both communities and improving our efficiency, despite the challenging resources climate we operate within.
Ian Lowrie,
Chief Executive
Adur District Council and Worthing Borough Council
3rd April 2008
Send the Chief Executive an e-mail
