Monday, 2 July 2007

Welcome

I started the morning greeting our new Finance and Administration Officer. She seems as friendly and dependable as she did at interview: she has already started getting to grips with the accounts, and will add wonderfully to the social mix of the office. We spent most of the afternoon together: I am confident that she is an excellent appointment and I greatly look forward to working with her.

Accommodation

In the morning, I met with representatives of Watford Borough Council about accommodation: WCVS will have to leave its current premises in the summer of 2008, 2009 or 2010. Everything was very cordial and we made some progress on defining WCVS’s needs. WBC are very supportive.

In part, this followed on from last week’s meeting on the needs of the local voluntary and community sector as a whole. Although the Borough is very supportive, their general approach seems to be that if a property isn’t being used by the Borough it should be sold off to the highest bidder. This “either / or" approach is at least simple and easy to understand. But it is not the most helpful. Nor does it follow current government guidance, and it also excludes many options that could bring great benefit to Watford (including greater economic benefit than simply selling to the highest bidder). It seems to me that a lot of discussions are needed on this.

Elsewhere

I had expected to spend the afternoon talking with Angelo to finalise some important IT decisions, but Angelo called to say he had car trouble. Instead, I wrote references for a few people, reviewed staff training to date, organised some meetings, caught up with some correspondence, made a few telephone calls …

WCVS had agreed to rent out one of our meeting rooms for the evening (7:00 to 9:00) and I had arranged for someone to work late to cover this. But they were unwell so Maria agreed to work late and I managed to get off home at the relatively civilized hour of 6:30. Maria called me later to say that no-one came anyway.