My first day at Mole Valley was 27th April and I am struck by how warm and welcoming everyone I have met has been. I am your new Transformation programme manager and will help bring about the Evolve 2026 vision that you have all been contributing to over the last few months.
I have come from Surrey County Council and was lucky enough to have a varied career during my time there. My most recent role was leading the shared services for the back-office teams across the ORBIS partnership.
However, core to my career has always been in delivering programmes, projects and change. I have done organisational change, process improvement and technology implementations so hopefully have the coverage to help enable our transformation at the council.
One of my proudest achievements was running the programme to insource East Sussex’s back office from their long-standing outsourced arrangements of over 22 years. This was no mean feat as I was left with just over 4 months to achieve this by the time the decision was made to go ahead!
I believe that in any change it is people that matter most and so try and major on making sure that everyone feels informed. As part of this we intend to continue the use of all in days to help keep you updated on current progress and thinking. However, we all respond to change in different ways and so it is important that this is two way and you come forward if you ever feel you need to know more about the programme.
Lastly, I am passionate about technologies role in improving how we work and deliver to our residents. The changes I brought to life in previous roles has always been to improve the self-service capabilities of the processes that we are responsible for.
What I have found over the years is that software suppliers often present the process to end users rather than providing the experience that they may need to get the most from interacting with us.
In order to help improve this at Surrey County Council I introduce AI to help support the process in the form of Robotics. This meant that we could get the most from our systems and provide services that met the customers needs more easily. An example is in automating password resets for the epayslip system, by using robotics this meant we could offer this as a 24/7 service as well as reduce the queries to our helpdesk. This saw Surrey County Council using robotics when only 10% of businesses in the UK were actively using this technology.
I am currently recruiting for a Continuous improvement practitioner and will be reviewing CV’s next week (so not too late to put yourself forward if this is something you are interested in).
I am also pleased to announce that Hannah Scott from our Committee services team will be joining the transformation team towards the end of May. Hannah will be our new Transformation Project officer and will be a key role in supporting the programme. Hannah will be making sure that our “interactive transformation days” have the right content to help you keep up to date.
At present we are working on our Evolve 2026 web pages and will be a further resource where you can learn more detail about the programme.
The strategies that you would have heard about at the most recent transformation day are being finalised with SLT. Once agreed we will publish our web pages so you can refer to these strategies and get a feel for how things will feel in the future. As soon as they are ready I will update my profile with a link. And for those who missed the office day, we’ve all recorded videos so you can see the same things others did on the day!
I am delighted to be a part of Mole Valley and to help you through your transformational journey over the next few years. I look forward to meeting all of you and learning more about your fantastic organisation.