Tuesday, 6 May 2008

After being absent for the best part of a week, I returned this morning to a quagmire of 250 unread e-mails - many of which I actually heard screaming for my attention.

I heard from Mary Green, the saintly CEO of Three Rivers CVS, that she is moving on to other things. I’m not sure where this leaves our various joint projects but doubtless things will become clearer in the fullness of time.

Most pressing though, was a telephone call I received from Jacquie Hime expressing her concern that the Hertfordshire Infrastructure Consortium may not be successful in its applications to the Capacitybuilders modernisation fund. We talked through various possible scenarios.

In the morning I also met with Watford Community Housing Trust ahead of next month’s networking lunch on the contribution and needs of older people. We had hoped to be joined by representatives of the Senior Citizens Forum but this did not happen. Nevertheless we had a very good discussion as a result of which WCVS is now trying to organise minibuses and stalls for the lunch.

At lunchtime I was joined by WBC Chief Executive Alastair Robinson to talk about procedures for allocating reward monies frm LAA1. Watford has reasonable expectations of receiving approximately £500k each in 2009-10 and 2010-11 as a government “reward” for its work on the first LAA. A subgroup of the One Watford LSP was charged with drawing up advice on the use of this money. The other members of the subgroup (the PCT and HCC) sent their apologies so Alistair and I enjoyed a clear field. We finally agreed on some very straightforward guidance with which I was extremely pleased - I hope the One Watford LSP is equally enthused.

After reading through 250 e-mails (and even answering some) I left the office about 8:00.