What’s happening in your area?

It was tremendous to have the honour of presenting our Buchan area management team with KDI certificates last week. They’ve done a lot of work to improve existing processes and this achievement is well-deserved. This also gave me the opportunity to visit a number of sites with Chris White, Area Manager for Buchan, and Stephen Archer, Director of Infrastructure, while we were in the area. It was great to see so many brilliant teams in action and I hope the staff enjoyed the chance to speak with us too.

I was delighted to attend the Banff Academy School Awards recently as well. The last time I’d been on a school stage it was alongside Emeli Sande (no singing from me thankfully!) and this time I joined the management of the school and house captains for a tremendous celebration of the senior pupils’ academic, sporting and social achievements. I was surprised to discover how many Scottish champions in sport the school is helping to nurture, in boxing, athletics and karate. We also enjoyed the inaugural performances of the school’s pipe band and choir, both of which were excellent.

Recruitment of the new Marr Area Manager is going really well. We received around 50 applications and the final eight will be discussed by committee with a view to final interviews in the near future.

I met with the Bank of England last week – a catch up we enjoy a couple of times a year to discuss the economy of the North East in the context of the UK and worldwide economies. As a council we’re able to offer some insight into how things are locally and they can show us their forecasting of interest rates so it’s a useful exercise which is mutually beneficial.

What’s happening in your area? Let’s help to raise the profile of some of the many and varied achievements of our staff.