From Monday 14 November, your vehicle will need to be registered with Visitor Express if you want to park at County Hall. The car park barrier will be down from midnight (00.00) on Sunday 13 November.

We upgraded the car park management system before the COVID-19 pandemic so access can be controlled by Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR). ANPR enables improved car park management, security and access for staff. The system will also provide live updates on how many spaces are available.

Please remember to record your flu jab on iTrent. We would encourage all frontline staff to receive a vaccine at a pharmacy and reclaim the cost through iTrent if you are not eligible for a free vaccine.

Do you play a musical instrument? Or would you like to join a choir to sing Christmas Carols in County Hall one day in December?

‘Carols in CH’ is planning to return this year, if there is enough interest, for a lunchtime concert (with audience participation). It will be on Tuesday 20 December at 1pm in the Ante Chamber (the area on the ground floor below the Committee Suite rooms).

If you would like to join us, get in touch by Wednesday 30 November.

• Musicians please contact ikumi.keighery@devon.gov.uk, stating the instrument you play
• Singers please contact helen.milton@devon.gov.uk

DCC’s environment team is starting to work with a wide range of partners to develop a statutory Local Nature Recovery Strategy for the county. Join a diverse range of DCC staff to help create a strategy which will identify opportunities for restoring and for maximising the benefits we gain from nature. 

You can sign up to attend the warm-up webinar on Eventbrite. To find out more please contact the County Ecologist, sarah.jennings@devon.gov.uk. To get future updates and invites please join the Devon Local Nature Partnership Forum. 

We are looking for volunteers to plant native trees under The Woodland Trust‘s #EmergencyTreeFund with ParkLife SW. The planting schemes aim to increase biodiversity, replace the loss of trees through ash dieback, and capture carbon.

If you’d like to get stuck in with some practical, outdoor work that supports nature and climate resilience, please fill out this form and we'll send you a timetable of volunteer tree planting events for this season and in the future. We would love your help!

Do you need new office furniture to make your home working environment more comfortable? If so, our Estates Team have surplus furniture available for you to use in your home. In County Hall there are pre-loved desks, chairs and other storage items, like pedestals, available to be collected.

If you would like to improve your home office set-up, contact Laurie, Project Manager, at laurie.harford@devon.gov.uk to discuss your needs.

Devon Learning (DeL) will be back online soon. Once live there will be changes to how you log into the system.

To bring this in line with our other systems, your username for DeL will become your iTrent assignment/payroll number. This is the number you use to log into your iTrent account.

Are you struggling to keep on top of your workload? Do you want some time to focus, de-stress or help keep on top of your collaboration? You need Viva Insights, Microsoft’s dedicated software to help you manage your work-life balance.

If you’re interested in learning what it can do for you, sign up to join the Digital Change Team on ‘Viva Insights’ on Monday 14 November. 

Young Devon are holding a Way We Talk workshop in Cranbrook at 9:30am on Tuesday 15 November. The one-day course is for parents, carers and professionals and focusses on supporting young people aged 11 to 25 years old. It will look at how the way we talk can change how young people think about themselves and their environment for the better and can improve life outcomes. Book onto the free one-day workshop on eventbrite. 

Explore the range of courses on offer through The Way We Talk programme and let others know what is on offer.

The Boundary Commission for England (BCE) is redrawing constituency boundaries in order to rebalance the number of electors represented by each MP, and a final consultation on proposed new constituencies is now open to the public.

A new revised map of constituency proposals, which takes into account feedback sent in by the public on the initial proposals, has been published on the consultation website bcereviews.org.uk.

Send in your views before the closing date of Monday 5 December to have your say on new parliamentary constituency boundaries.

New offers to look at this week include pamper experiences from Viva Hair in Exeter.

Antibiotics are medicines that treat bacterial infections. However, bacteria are becoming more resistant to our antibiotics making it harder than ever to treat infections. This is called antibiotic resistance and it can lead to more deaths and complications for people receiving medical treatment.

If you have any unused antibiotics then now is the time to return them to your pharmacist, who will dispose of them safely.

You can also pledge to become an Antibiotic Guardian.

Last week Smarter Devon hosted their first data apprenticeship networking event, 'What good data looks like', for colleagues completing an apprenticeship linked to Data and Intelligence at DCC. You can read more on the Smarter Devon Share Point site.

The network now aims to meet once a month to support our apprentices during their learning journey.

If you are interested in knowing more about our apprenticeships, please contact the apprenticeship team at apprenticeships@devon.gov.uk

If you have a question about Data and Intelligence, please contact the Smarter Devon mailbox who will be happy to help explore more.   

• Last week our training and development programme participated in Court Skills training, with 16 social workers from Children's Social Care attending the two-day course. Register to take part next time.
• The Crafter's Club community is growing! Last week Deborah shared her homemade lampshade, after struggling to find one she liked.
• Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services, plus other groups and people from across Devon, will join forces again to Reclaim the Night, with marches across two nights.