Christmas comes to Surrey Heath House! You can’t fail to spot that Christmas is starting to arrive at the office! The fantastic Christmas tree has been installed at the front of the building and we suspect it will be fairly quickly followed by decorations up around the SHBC office too! Thank you to the Greenspace and Facilities teams for arranging the office tree and overseeing it’s safe arrival! Trees have also been put up at Frimley Lodge Park and Lightwater Country Park so visitors to our premier parks in the Borough can get into the festive spirit too! Robin Hood The panto cast ran several workshops last weekend during the Camberley Christmas Light Switch On event and rehearsals are now underway! With scenery and the set arriving next week – it’s fair to say it’s going to be a thrilling adventure for all the family! We’re all excited about the treehouses that are planned! Don’t forget that the theatre has kindly offered staff the opportunity to buy reduced price tickets for the final dress rehearsal on Sunday 8 December at 5pm. Do contact the Box Office if you’d like tickets. HeathScene is out now! The winter edition of HeathScene will be landing on door mats across the Borough this week. Once again it is packed with news and information relating to our services for residents as well as some festive events that are taking place locally. You can catch up on the latest news on a huge variety of topics including; the regeneration of Camberley, our recent business breakfast, the playground refurbishment programme, information on our ever popular Christmas tree recycling scheme, how to support residents and local carers at Christmas, an update on how we are helping those affected by homelessness, the latest grant funding recipients, the community governance review in Windlesham and next steps in the local plan process. Thank you to all those who help with the publication by sharing stories and creating content and to Marketing and Communications for bringing it all together. We love the front cover – a lovely snow scene in Frimley Green kindly ‘donated’ to us by the Windlesham & Camberley Camera Club. All Staff Briefing Don’t forget the All Staff Briefing takes place on Monday with sessions at 10.30am and 2pm available to attend. You can raise any question for the panel anytime by visiting slido.com and using the event code L627. Villages Working Group Meeting Earlier this year a new working group of the Executive called the Villages Working Group, was set up to consider opportunities to support the vitality and growth of the borough’s villages and locations outside of Camberley town centre. There are ten members of the Group representing all four of the political groups on the Council. The first meeting was a workshop facilitated by Kate Galloway and Teresa Hogsbjerg to identify key themes and ideas for future projects. Earlier this week, the Group met for the second time. Concepts to improve transport and connectivity between the rural and urban parts of the borough via community transport were presented together with a concept that could transform a council-owned property in Bagshot into a vibrant community and commercial hub. Other key objectives of the group include improved promotion of local heritage in our villages as well as their unique business offer and events throughout the year. Emergency Planning Exercise Applied Resilience (the company who lead on our emergency planning responsibilities) hosted a Borough Emergency Control Centre (BECC) exercise on Monday designed to test our tactical response to a large scale fire in the Borough. It was a great success and helped build confidence and knowledge in how to respond and work in the BECC. We had welfare, operations and corporate cells helping to show that a range of skills from across the Council is needed to respond effectively in an emergency. It is hugely helpful to experience an ‘emergency’ and learn in this relaxed environment without the pressure of it being a real life situation. This type of training is offered regularly so please do look out for future dates. It’s important to refresh your experience regularly and if you haven’t had the opportunity to take part yet, email [email protected] who can let you know as soon as new dates for the training are confirmed. Election Update All things election continue at pace! Polling stations are all booked with additional plans in place for heating, lighting and gritting entrances. We have enough poll clerks, presiding officers, polling station inspectors, counting assistants, table leaders and count supervisors! The five candidates standing in Surrey Heath were announced last week, poll cards will be landing with residents this week and the first batches of postal votes will be sent next week. We’re planning around panto at the theatre in order to be able to conduct the count there – tree houses and orchestra pits aside! We’re also making the final arrangements for a ‘Plan B’ Count Locations now that the Arena doesn’t exist any more! The Democratic Services team (and other teams who are kindly supporting us for this Election) have managed to deliver a huge amount of work in a very short space of time. Well done to all those involved so far, 3 weeks to go!!.