Blogs

Nigel's Blog: 26 July 2019

Posted: Friday 26th July 2019

What a week weather wise! It’s been very hot in the office, temperature records are being broken and in parts of the Country it has caused major problems for rail travellers which seems a first to me! Let’s hope the nice weather continues into the weekend and for the remainder of the summer as we all take some time off. My holiday is not until the end of August so I’m really keeping my fingers crossed that it holds ... especially as I had a week off at Easter and despite all the nice weather around at that time I managed to find a week of cold and wet weather!!

Last weekend I spent bodyboarding at Rest Bay on the Saturday and then watching Lois in a dressage competition on the Sunday. The waves were great at Rest Bay and Lois came 2nd and 5th in her competition. So all round a good weekend. Of course we have no Panteg football yet ... although its now only two weeks from the start of the season and a return to normality. Of course that’s not what Jill and Lois think!

Alison has been on leave this week so I’ve been (hopefully) keeping the shop open in her absence. In particular I covered Council on Tuesday which is a rare occurrence as Alison very rarely misses it. It was certainly different sitting in the Chief Executives seat on the dais rather than my usual one. Still it all seemed to go ok.

Last Monday I had meetings with Sharon and Richard around developing our income strategy, a quick catch up with Dave on his return from leave and then I had my weekly brief with the Executive Member for Resources. The day concluded with a meeting with Victor around the sale of County Hall.

In addition to Council on Tuesday we had the T22 Board which I also chaired. Under James’s stewardship we are really starting to make good progress on our T22 programme.

I only had one meeting on Wednesday, I met with Richard Lewis on some planning issues. I had hoped to use the day generally to make sense of my in-box ... but failed pretty miserably in that endeavour.

On Thursday morning we had a significant meeting looking at the Investment Strategy in relation to the Pension Fund; Torfaen is the administering authority for the Greater Gwent Pension Fund. Today I am meeting with Matt from the SRS to talk about the medium term financial plan for the SRS, now that we are providing the support services.

Not sure what we will be doing this weekend; Lois is working Saturday and Sunday so it’ll probably be Jill and I getting out somewhere ... and of course there are always a number of jobs to do. Cutting the lawn this week will be near the top of the list. I’ll also get out for a couple of runs on Saturday and Sunday morning ... too warm to be in the gym.

Next week is looking quite crowded meetings wise early on. On Monday I’ve got a brief with Richard and then a catch up with the Chief Executive. Then it’s my weekly brief with the Executive Member. Tuesday I’m meeting with Grant Thornton our external auditors for a review of how it’s gone this year, followed by a meeting with James and then a run through with Dave and colleagues on our quarter one monitoring position. Wednesday starts with a brief with Dave, then a meeting with Ignite (who are helping us with T22), a brief with Peter follows that and then the morning ends with a conversation around apprenticeships with Jason, Dave and Peter. In the afternoon we have the T22 Support Services Board.

After that the week starts to free up as other than Resources Leadership the diary at the moment is pretty clear. Let’s hope I can use that space to make sense of my in-box ... fingers crossed.

I hope everyone has a good summer and gets away for a break. By the time of my next blog normal service will have resumed ... and by that I mean Panteg will be playing football again!!