Congratulations!

Congratulations to Rob Turner, Highway Asset Senior Officer, who has completed a degree in Civil Engineering with first class honours.

Well done!

Well done to both Amanda Pitchford and Julian Roskilly who have been nominated by their colleagues for STARS awards.  

Congratulations and well done also go to the Newton Abbot Neighbourhood Team who are corporate With Compliments winners for the Apr - June period. 

See below for details of how to nominate your colleagues for a STARS award.

Staff Achievements and Reward Scheme (STARS) is open to all Devon Highways staff

The STARS Environment category is ideal to nominate our teams and colleagues. Has someone you know demonstrated an outstanding contribution to caring/managing our environment, and/or our natural resources? Take the opportunity to recognise a colleague/team for the work they do?  If you are unable to access the STARS webpage please download the nomination form and email or post it back.

Compliments

The following compliment has been received for the PROW team from Brampford Speke Parish Council who are part of the Parish Paths Partnership Scheme;

Dear Ros, I have been asked to forward a thank you to you, Richard Spurway and your colleagues for your continued support and in particular the great job done with the sleepers between the parishes of Upton Pyne and Brampford Speke.  We have also informed our DCC Councillor that we consider that we have a very good working relationship and communication from your department.

The following compliments have been received by Simon Phillips, Highway Engineer - Torrington Neighbourhood Team;

Dear Simon, very encouraged this week to see that we have two work programmes in place related to issues we raised with you at our meetings earlier in the year; Bradworthy Cross to Jenns Cross and then onto Alsowthy Mill and Stowford Cross to Buses Mill.

A big thank you for listening to our concerns about these two roads and for something being done.

-

Hello Simon, to who is responsible for arranging the repair and resurfacing of the road between Holemoor and Bason Cross, many many thanks.

Parish & Town Council Conference

Arrangements are underway for this year's Parish & Town Council Conference.  We will again hold two events, one for the East of the County and one for the West. 

The provisional dates are the 14 and 21 October.  Venue information will be available shortly.

If you have items which you feel should be included on the agenda, would like to do a presentation or would just like to be involved please speak to Tom Vaughan.

Neighbourhood Highway Group update

The allocation of Neighbourhood Highway Officer posts in the new structure has now been confirmed as detailed on the attached spreadsheet.

The next step will be for Neighbourhood Highway Engineers to discuss, with the new teams, the allocation of Electoral Divisions to individual officers and determine who wishes to be considered for inclusion in the standby arrangements.

It is planned to introduce the new arranges from 1 September 2015.

Public Rights of Way update

This month's update includes;

• South West Coast Path
• Stover Country Park
• PS3 Newsletter
• DCAF Newsletter

Highway & Traffic Management restructure

The restructure has now progressed as far as the F grades but is running behind the original programme.

The current status of the restructure appointments and the programme are being updated from time to time on the restructure section of the Hub.  Please visit this regularly to keep informed about the restructure progress.  There may also be some jobs advertised externally so keep an eye on the Devon Jobs pages if you are interested.

Chris Cranston - Operations & Communications Manager

Works Ordering User Group

Update from 1st Meeting

The group had its first meeting on Wednesday 22 July 2015.  It was great to see so many faces from across the service, keen to ensure the new system meets their needs.  Please see who was there and pass your feedback to the representative from your side of the service.  It is really important that all sides are involved if we are to get a system fit for purpose.

This first meeting was to set the scene, with Simon Milner going over the Systems Thinking flow that was agreed; how to get a job from creation to payment.

Strider and Neil from WDM took this and following a group discussion, took the information they needed to get a first rough draft of the system together.  This will be demonstrated at the next meeting in two weeks.

The implementation plan was agreed with further meetings for the group to hone and mold the system until it is ready for testing in September.  Testing will be carried out through September and October and once the system is signed off there will be 3 weeks of formal training for all users in November and the system will go live in December.

Roxanne Tandridge - Highways Systems Manager

Serious Collision Investigation

All staff should be aware that we have a system established where external collision investigators are sent to highway incidents where we need to gather information to protect the Authority's interest and take timely action if appropriate.

Whilst we continue to get a lot of information from the Police via the HOCC, with police cut-backs, there are times when some pertinent information is not passed onto the HOCC.

it is therefore important for all staff, and particularly those on standby out of hours, to ensure that the HOCC is informed if they become aware that an incident is more serious than was first reported to them, so that timely decisions can be taken to send collision investigators.  This is particularly important at sites where there are clusters of incidents.

Chris Cranston - Operations & Communications Manager