What a week!

Well what a week! I cannot tell a lie, I am really looking forward to the weekend. Most of my most momentous times this week have been in the evenings and culminated in a legal budget being set on Wednesday evening after the adjournment of the previous Thursday. This was quite a relief to me and fellow senior officers because of the importance of us having the capacity to bring in necessary income to keep the council’s functions going and to be able to comply with our timetable for billing our citizens.

Last night a further momentous decision was taken by members of Policy & Resources Committee when they finally approved the scheme for funding the i360 development on the seafront. As most of you know better than I, this is a scheme that has been under development for many years and the decision last night means that we will see activity on the seafront this year, with a view to opening the tower in 2016. At this point I must pay tribute to the numbers of staff and managers who have contributed to the development of both the i360 and the budget for 2014/15. They are too big in number to mention and I hope they know how much I appreciate the work they have done in sometimes quite challenging circumstances. 

To lighten my evenings this week on Tuesday night I was speaking at the launch of the programme for the Brighton Fringe. This took place in the Sea Life Centre and involved me, the director of the Fringe and another speaker standing on a platform in the middle of the shark and turtle pool! Whilst I was speaking two enormous turtles, Lulu and Gulliver, took to consummating their friendship right below the platform. Because I had listened quite intently to Alan, our guide on the platform, I knew that Lulu was 75 and that my assumptions about her being past child bearing age were quite wrong. So I was able to enlighten the audience as to these facts. You can imagine there was quite some hilarity as the whole audience witnessed the event with me providing the informed commentary! Brighton Fringe and Brighton Festival are both going to be fabulous and booking is open now - so start planning for an entertaining May.  

So it has been a week of listening and presiding over significant decisions which will affect the city next year and for years to come. The challenge for all of us will be that we have got to deliver the budget and almost immediately start our service and financial planning for subsequent years which will be even more demanding.

It’s International Women’s Day tomorrow and I spoke at a Women's Forum at lunchtime on the theme of resilience. We all need to develop and find our personal and team resilience in the face of the change and challenge that is going to face us and I for one am keen to see this as an opportunity to do some things differently and to do some things better.

That’s enough for now, I’m off to visit the Martlets Hospice and then to recharge my batteries over the weekend and I hope you do the same.

Best wishes
Penny