Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Mayor of Poole 2006/07

The first ever Mayor of Poole's Grand Draw will take place at the Mayor‘s Grand Spring Fair on May 7^th Bank  Holiday Monday.

The amazing first prize is worth a minimum of £1100.  It entails 2 weeks travel with Brittany Ferries on any route at any time of year, for a car a four people and cabin accommodation with £250 in hard cash spending money.  Second Prize is a fabulous mountain bike and third prize one of the most popular modern ‘must haves' an amazing all singing all dancing digital radio, with many other attractive prizes.

So if you would normally buy weekly lottery tickets, perhaps you'll consider buying a book of Grand Draw tickets for one week instead, you stand a much better chance of winning too! Tickets are available from l.belcham@poole.co.uk 07931531394 and/or j.butt@poole.co.uk 07976726747 and/or j.clements@poole.co.uk 01202 633200

The winning ticket for the Mayor of Poole's Grand Draw?

Top prize in the Draw - £1100 travel package on Brittany Ferries

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, attended a fundraising event for the Streetwise Centre at the Hamworthy Club in Canford Magna.

The Streetwise Safety Education Centre is a joint venture between the emergency services, local authorities and the business community. It is a life size village built inside a warehouse off Ringwood Road, Bournemouth to raise awareness of everyday safety and good citizenship issues. Safety at home, in the town, in the countryside and even on the beach is covered on a Streetwise Safety Tour lasting up to two hours. The Streetwise village includes a full sized two-storey house, a high street, a park, a farmyard, a railway track, electricity sub station, a heath, a beach and a building site. All the scenarios have been built as in real life and using real bricks and mortar and other materials to be found in the real world.

The event was a dance to a live band, starting with the all-girl Barbed Wire band playing nostalgic pop music from the 60s and 70s. They later gave way to the Haywire band, playing mainly rock interspersed with some slower numbers. The Mayor drew the raffle, her usual luck deserting her with no wins at all on this occasion, and made a short speech congratulating the organisers on the success of the evening. In an amusing incident, when the Mayor was ready to leave she found her mobile phone battery dead leaving her unable to summon her chauffeur. Fortunately, an appeal to the audience produced a kind gentleman with an in-car charger which enabled her to make the call and arrange her ride home!!

Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Mayor of Poole, said "It was a very lively evening with great music from the infamous Haywire Band.  It was a little frustrating again to be at a dance and unable to do so, but I danced at least from the waist up and joined in as best I could. The event raised £1550 for the Streetwise charity, I wish them every success for the future."

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, with Streetwise Centre Manager Alison Curtis (left) and volunteers.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, talks with some of the guests at the fundraising event at the Hamworthy Club in Canford Magna.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, helped out with folding raffle tickets during the evening.

The Mayor's colleague Cllr Leo Belcham, joins in the dancing at the Streetwise fundraising event.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, congratulated Freddy Clements on his achievement on becoming the newest member of the Dorset & Wiltshire Society of RFU Referees, just days after reaching the minimum qualifying age of 13.

A part of the Rugby Football Union, the Society is responsible for appointing referees to all RFU matches in the two counties, and ensures the highest standards by means of training and grading of referees. It is also empowered to deal with disciplinary matters arising in RFU matches. In what is probably not a coincidence, Freddy's father, Stephen Clements, is also an RFU referee and serves as PR Officer for the Society.

Freddy turned up at the Parlour with his parents Stephen and Jo and sister Isabel, and the youngsters did a rapid demolition job on the juice, crisps and breadsticks laid out for them. The youngsters then left the adults to their conversation and were taken to the Council Chamber, where they had great fun holding an impromptu Council meeting, Freddy putting forward some unique proposals for Council Tax expenditure while his sister, as Leader of the Opposition, offered some more mundane but more believable ideas. Despite Freddy obviously possessing more talent as a referee than as a politician, the debate raged on until reluctantly brought to a close by the need for the Mayor to go on to her next engagement.

Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Mayor of Poole, said "I was amazed to hear from a colleague that Freddy has accomplished such an accolade at such a tender age and I therefore asked his parents if they would like to accompany him and his little sister to visit me in my Parlour for tea and to receive a certificate of recognition of this truly startling achievement. I believe he is the youngest British rugby referee, quite an accomplishment when you are only 13 years old, well done Freddy."

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, with new young referee Freddy Clements.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, with Freddy, his parents and sister in the Parlour.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, joined in the 1^st anniversary of Poole Council's Customer Services Call Centre at the Civic Centre.

The Call Centre originated from the Council's Customers First project, which itself started as part of the Government-sponsored E-government programme, and research some 3-4 years ago showed that more than half of all telephone calls received by the Council at that time went unanswered because there was nobody available. It also indicated that most calls were straightforward queries which could be easily answered at first point of contact by suitably trained staff. As a result, the Council decided to improve its communications with the public by establishing the Call Centre which would be able to deal with about 80% of all calls using the publicly-available Council website (http://www.boroughofpoole.com/), with only 20% being passed to specialist back office staff.  As departments are phased into the Call Centre, this target is being easily achieved with the Call Centre taking an average 200 calls per day and answering more than 80% of them.

The celebrations were set off by the Mayor giving a hilarious speech about all the little problems that the CS department had suffered, the great flood for instance on the morning of the grand opening!  But undaunted they soldiered on with able assistance from Ruth Lawson and her communications department. Customer Services Manager Chris Owens paid particular tribute to three people who had contributed to the success; Katie Symons who leads the Service Development team, Mandy Lagan in the Performance Deveklopment team, and Ken Hunter in the Customer Services team. After touring the department and talking to many of the staff, the visit concluded with Ken demonstrating the latest workflow software for switching incoming telephone calls to waiting customer service advisers, ensuring that calls are answered as quickly as possible by the most knowledgable advisers.

Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Mayor of Poole, said "It is gratifying to see the outcome of what seemed so embryonic just over 4 years ago.  With our E-gov team on the job we were always destined for the planning and delivery phases to be a huge success and that is just what they have been. We are now unbelievably in phase C and well on the way to the completion of the whole project. I take some part in this success as this was one of the projects that I as Chairman of the Resources Overview Group in 2003 with the support of my Vice Chairman took on board and channelled through all the required partner agencies to become the success it is. However my part is infinitesimal in comparison to that which has been played recently by Chris Owens and his superb team of ICT gurus, telephonists and admin staff in order to reach our first birthday of Customer Services and all its accomplishments. My thanks to all at Customer Services who really do provide an excellent holistic enquiry/resolution service, I look forward to their second birthday and another bit of cake!"

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Customer Services Manager Chris Owens at joined in the 1^st anniversary of Poole Council's Call Centre.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, shares one of her outrageous jokes with Customer Services staff.

The Customer Services birthday cake.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, backed by the Customer Services management team, makes the first cut into the birthday cake.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, shares another of her outrageous jokes with a customer services adviser.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, learns from team leader Ken Hunter about the new telephone call workflow software.

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, together with other senior political figures from Bournemouth and Poole, took part in a ‘Voting Matters' seminar and debate at Bournemouth and Poole College at the Lansdowne, Bournemouth. The event was organised so that students could have a more hands on approach as to why they should exercise their right to vote, it was not a political platform but an opportunity for all students to challenge the panel as to why they should take part in democracy and use their vote to make the changes they want to see.

The panel consisted of the Mayor of Poole Cllr Mrs Judy Butt; Baroness Thomas; the Mayor of Bournemouth; Cllr Mike Plummer; Ms Annette Brooke MP; Tobias Elwood MP; Neil Parish MEP; Dr David Smith MP and  Baroness Maddox.

Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, Mayor of Poole, said, "The morning began with each panel member giving an 8 minute presentation regarding who they were, what they did and why and where they did it. Not too difficult for politicians to speak about themselves! We then split into discussion groups with further presentations by panel members on their individual roles within their particular area of democracy. I was very pleased to share my session with Baroness Thomas a delightful lady from the House of Lords, so we had the two extremes of statute provision, the Lords and the Local Council byelaws, but both important in their own right. We then returned to the lecture hall and were questioned by the students on a myriad of topics. It was great fun and the panel worked very well together on a balanced and friendly basis, the main issue was to encourage the students to vote regardless of political choices available, exercising their right to vote was what was important as a tiny percentage of 18 - 35's actually do vote, personally I feel they have a huge amount to contribute and their views must be part of shaping the future for everyone. My own son Daniel will be voting for the first time in local elections this May and he is very much looking forward to it."

The Mayor of Poole, Cllr Mrs Judy Butt, with members of the panel.