It has been a busy couple of months with the Structural Changes Order passing through Parliament and the first meeting of both the Shadow Dorset Council and the Shadow Executive Committee being held.

You can follow the activities of the Shadow Dorset Council on Twitter @Dorset_SC
You can also read the latest news on the Shadow Dorset Council website www.dorsetareacouncils.wordpress.com

Dorset Councils Partnership wins award for Workforce Transformation
We recently put together an awards submission for the Municipal Journal Local Government Achievement Awards 2018 under the category of Workforce Transformation. 
The criteria for shortlisting was:
A flexible, transformed and productive workforce. Employee engagement and involvement of employees and Trade Unions through change and beyond. Joined-up ways of working. Clear links to the organisation objectives, including metrics to show results and impact for example, increased productivity, improved customer service etc. Embedding engagement in behavioural and cultural change. Creating a can do culture Matt Prosser and colleagues from across the organisation attend the Awards Ceremony on Wednesday night, and we are delighted to say, that we won!
 
I’m sure you will join us in recognising how far we have come. In just three years we have brought together three sovereign councils into a partnership, sharing one workforce. To be in a position to not only successfully bring these together, but to be recognised nationally as leaders in partnership working and transforming the way that we work is something we should be proud of and celebrate.

Help promote our £1000 prize draw to residents
Each year we are required to undertake an annual canvass to ensure that names recorded on the electoral register are as up to date as possible. 

Once again this year we will be holding a £1000 prize draw to encourage residents to give their information digitally to help reduce postage and processing costs.

We estimate that digital registrations cost just 23p per elector. Returned paper forms, on the other hand, cost approximately £2.50 per elector. More than ten times as much!

The Household Enquiry Form will be landing on doormats across the partnership area on 31 July. Residents can choose to complete and return the paper form by post, but if they respond to the form online, by text or phone before 14 August they will be automatically entered in to a prize draw to win £1000.

We need your help to promote the draw to residents, either face-to-face, on social media or whatever way suits you best.

The competition will soon be promoted on our social media channels and on our newsroom site. If you are active on social media please help by sharing our posts.

Dorsetforyou migration complete
A large amount of work has gone into building our new dorsetforyou website and we are pleased to announce that all content has now been successfully migrated and our old website has been switched off. 

Work is now underway in order to enhance the site further, this includes:
Fixing broken links Optimising the search function Removing old web pages from search engines      Feedback is extremely important as we continue to improve the website. If you spot anything that’s not working as it should, please let us know by clicking on the ‘Have some feedback?’ button on the bottom of each web page.

Planning validations continue to improve
Our Planning Business Support Team have continued improvements validation timescales.
Since January they have been working hard and thinking outside the box in order to reduce our validation times and improve on customer services. The team have now managed to get validation times down to two weeks across all three authorities.

Work is continuing to keep times within the two weeks or lower, but this does change week on week.

Universal Credit
We want you to be aware that there have been some changes to the Universal Credit system that may affect residents. Please find a linked document detailing these changes.​