The Friday Joke 21/3/2013

From our friends in America

And closer to home

And even closer to home (see highlighted bit in red)  (This was the weekly broadcast from Pam Wharfe, Director of Barnet Council). I guess you had to be in court for the JR to know just how funny this statement really is.

Dear colleagues

You may have seen in the news over the past few days that the Judicial Review has been heard at the High Court this week.  As we expected, we aren’t yet able to tell you the outcome of the Hearing and it is quite usual for the Judge to take several weeks to announce the court’s final decision.

While we can’t predict the final decision we do remain confident that the Council has followed a robust process throughout the DRS project and we are hopeful that we will be able to proceed with the democratic decision-making once the Judicial Review has been resolved.  I will of course let you know as soon as I have any more news.

In the meantime, as we move to being a commissioning council, the new structure of the organisation will be in place from 2 April.  As part of this restructure DRS services will all move into one business unit and, I am delighted to say, Bill Murphy will take up the role of DRS Director from 2 April.  Bill has been leading customer services and revenues and benefits through their outsourcing process as well as leading the Library Strategy.   So he is used to dealing with a range of difficult issues and customer facing services!

In order to further facilitate this change, and to enable Declan Hoare to take up his role as a Lead Commissioner, I have asked Martin Cowie to take on line management of Highway Design and Transport and Regeneration and for Rick Mason to take on Traffic Management.  The senior managers involved are aware of their line management changes.  Although this creates two reporting lines within highways I would not expect this to damage working relationships across the highways service.

There will be plenty of information about how the new structure will work on the intranet over the coming weeks but if you have any questions about how these changes will affect you or your team please speak to your manager or raise it through the staff group.

Change and Me workshops are available for staff over the coming weeks.  The next workshop will take place on 28 March 9.30 – 10.30 in Cedar. We are currently arranging more dates for April and May. These sessions are run by Maria Goldsmith, the council’s staff counsellor, tohelp staff explore their feelings about change.  If you would like to book onto a session please email employee.support@barnet.gov.uk.

Kind regards

Pam Wharfe

Director for Place

London Borough of Barnet

2nd Floor Building 4, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP

0208 3** 7***

www.barnet.gov.uk