10 May 2024

Now that the elections are over and we are no longer in the pre-election period, I will be continuing my weekly blog to talk about the work I am doing. I hope you all had a bank holiday, and are enjoying what looks to be the start of some nice weather finally.

This week started with a pre-agenda meeting of Cabinet ahead of the full meeting on 16 May. At the meeting we will be discussing our outdoor play provision, progress of the A Fairer Stockton-on-Tees programme, the newly released Director of Public Health Annual Report and more.

Wednesday was a busy day. The first meeting of the day was a meeting of the political group leaders in the Borough to talk about what is being discussed at Cabinet next week. Later in the day I had a catch up with Garry Cummings, Director of Finance, Transformation and Performance, and Deputy Chief Executive. It's important I have regular meetings with our Director of Finance to make sure that we are keeping to our Medium Term Financial Plan, and I can be kept informed of any unexpected issues that we may be facing.

Later in the afternoon myself and the Deputy Leader of the Council, Councillor Lisa Evans, met with Mike Greene, Chief Executive. In this regular catch up we touched on last week's elections, and Powering Our Future - an internal transformation programme which is changing the way we work to deliver better services at better value for money.

Yesterday and today I am catching up on emails and important paperwork ahead of a busy week next week.

This weekend I'm looking forward to spending some time with my family in what will hopefully be some warm weather. Middlesbrough finished the season last weekend with a good 3-1 win against Watford, which saw them take 8^th position in the league. I'm sure we all hoped for more at the start of the season, but we've got a team who are playing well together and I hope we build on it to start the 2024/25 campaign strongly.