Member of the County Council for Lichfield Rural East & Deputy Leader - Lichfield District representing Shenstone & Wall

I think that’s how I’d sum up my first couple of weeks ’in charge’ of Social Care and non-primary Health across Staffordshire.

My Department has a controllable budget of nearly £300million (plus some extra pooled budget with the NHS), about 4000 employees, directly helps around 30,000 Staffordshire people and has some monumental challenges ahead around demography, finances and public expectation. 

The words ‘in charge’ I use with some caution because actually the time since my appointment has been spent listening, learning and trying to absorb the enormity and complexity of my brief. It would be wrong to go in like an express train, changing things from a standpoint of ignorance and is something, although tempting from a Political point of view, that would damage the potential for a thoughtful and considered approach to making a genuine and fundamental change for the better.

That said, day four of my induction process started to shape in more detail how I believe we can change Labour’s previous approach and make the Care and Health ‘jungle’ in Staffordshire easier and more accessible for people to understand and engage with.

I am certain, and have already started to address, the need to cut through the extraordinary amount of data collection, target setting, red tape and tick box bureaucracy which appears to be at the very core of what the Department has been forced to do. The right data collection is important in order to manage services safely, efficiently and pragmatically but collecting ’stats’ for the sake of it is costly, time consuming and demoralising for the professionals who trained to deliver real help to real people… not spend half their time number crunching and form filling.

And the officials who make up my senior management team are absolutely behind my first decision for rationalisation of data collection although do have some concerns at the Government’s response to ceasing some of the bureaucratic edicts which come with menace from Whitehall.

Actually, a pleasant surprise for me has been the relative absence of interferance and control from Whitehall (which is overbearing at District and Borough Council level) and the fact that so much of what I am finding is the previous Labour Administration’s determination to follow their national masters’ guideance and unenforceable wishes to the letter. My programme to cut back on this and free up more time for substantive activities starts very shortly.

So a phenomenal amount to learn and litterally hundreds of people to talk to but I am feeling much more comfortable than a week ago and incredibly optimistic, frankly excited, about the chance of really changing things in Staffordshire for the better.

I make no secret of the fact that I want our county to lead the way nationally in the next couple of years and with my senior management team being set free from some of the drudgery and daily firefighting, instead using their very obvious expertise and talent to deliver the new approach I want, we have every chance of making that positive difference.

Fine words from me I know but I’m really genuinely optimistic for the future and utterly determined to make it work.

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I think I’ve said before that Harlaston is an architical English village and yesterday’s visit to their Open Gardens reminded me why I always think that.

From the beautiful small country church and traditional mixed style of houses along the road leading through the centre of the village to the refreshingly sympathetic small modern housing development with its own village green, it all lends itself to the ‘chocolate box’ English feel of the place. Very lovely indeed.

A couple of dozen cars in the Open Gardens car park when we got there and by the time we left an hour later many many more with lots of people wandering around the fourteen gardens open for inspection and envy. The Koi Carp frequenting some of the garden ponds were staggering!

So, the two day event looks like a big success hot on the heels of the biggest open garden event locally which was at Hints a few weeks ago.

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The village of Drayton Bassett has an extraordinary feel of confidence over recent times. I was there today on a vist to the annual village fete.

Because of a clutch of things in the patch today we went literally as the fete was starting. None the less a decent number of people were there and as we left 45 minutes later a very steady stream of people were on their way in to enjoy the many things on offer.

A great mixture for the kids, an air rifle shooting range (which I’ll write about in another post), welly-wanging, fair rides, stacks of ‘rurally’ orientated displays, Community First Responders with other local groups and public services stands meant there was plenty to see and do.

And it all adds to that feel of confidence I opened this post with. More people from the village than ever before getting involved organising local activities, some excellent plans and improvements in the pipeline for the village and in general things look and feel very good indeed.

With the elections firmly out of the way I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in and giving them a hand and some support where I can.

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The publication, if that’s what you could call it, of receipts and information about MPs’ expenses is the latest extraordinary twist to a sad saga in our country’s democracy.

It’s almost as though someone has sat down, concerned that a little of the steam has gone out of the very public demolition of democracy, and wondered how they could try for another killer blow.  ’I know, let’s publish the long awaited information in a way which sticks two fingers up at the good people of Britain again… that should do it’.

And so they did. None of the Honourable Members appeared to know it was going to happen like that and nobody since has taken responsibility for it. So someone has got to get a grip. Someone has got to take control of this situation.

If something this controversial happened in Local Government the Mandarins of Whitehall would be demanding intervention centrally. I’ve no idea who is leading on this issue in practical terms, either in the Civil Service or politically, but whoever it is he, she or they are failing in a spectacular way.

Someone has to get a grip on this and fast. I for one am losing what little confidence I had left very fast indeed!

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What a few days it’s been. Meeting after meeting as the new Conservative Administration takes the reigns at the County. Exciting and pressured, yes!

And today saw agreement at political Cabinet on a plethora of new initiatives and announcements over the next few weeks. Amongst those the assurance from my Cabinet colleague responsible for the Environment that officials are working on plans to limit the amount of aggregate extraction in Staffordshire under the, now infamous, Minerals Core Strategy.

I’m pleased with what I heard but, on a cautionary note, it will probably still be a battle to secure a large reduction in the massive 65% that Staffordshire have, under Labour’s old policy, contributed to the regional aggregates quota.

But at least we have a clear policy for officials to follow and negotiate with central Government on and although it will be a Public Inquiry which confirms or otherwise the eventual County’s draft Strategy in just over a year things are going as well as I could have hoped post election.

It’s still early days and there will be important consultation periods where local people will need to show their support for the Conservative  stance to limit the quarrying. I’ll keep sending the email updates to all those who are registered and, of course, continue to write about it here.

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