Wednesday, 30th May 2007

It is a very great honour to be writing this as the newly elected Leader of Staffordshire County Council.

I may be a new face to some, but I am sure many others will know me from my time spent as Deputy Leader, Leader for Social Services and the various other posts I've held during my 14 years as a County Councillor.

First of all I need to pay tribute to Terry Dix, who left the role of Leader on May 17. Terry was a tremendous Leader and has been an inspiration to me and many colleagues. He will continue to serve the county council and is our new Chairman.

We face a period of real challenge at Staffordshire County Council, but we are determined to meet them.

Our aim is to improve services, particularly for vulnerable people, while living within our budget.

A priority is to improve services for older people and many of you will be aware that we are currently consulting about our Changing Lives proposals.

But we have also been working hard to improve services for youngsters, and especially with those who would have been in danger of entering the care system in the past. We are also determined to keep on driving up education standards.

Creating safer and stronger communities, where people are not in fear of crime or anti social behaviour, and can access services easily and efficiently is another goal. Obviously the County Council can't achieve this alone and we are working closer with partners like the district councils and police than we've ever done before. We'll continue to improve the way we do this.

We also need to make sure that Staffordshire has a prosperous economy. This authority is constantly working to bring more jobs to the county. But in particular we want skilled jobs that offer rewarding career prospects and will bring a better quality of life for Staffordshire's workforce.

This is only the briefest outline of where our priorities lie. If you check here on a regular basis I hope you'll soon build up a picture of where our priorities lie and the work that we're doing.

Last Modified: 01/06/2007 14:36:56
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