My Week - Cold snap recovery begins in earnest

Since we don't blanket-close schools in the borough, they make their own decisions but may need some advice before doing so. Not this time it seems, as the phones are quiet till 8.30am, and I take the opportunity to catch up on Building Schools for the Future plans. The programme will bring more than £100m of building projects into the borough.

I spend the afternoon evaluating feedback from staff consultations on our planned restructure. It's the start of a week in which we're taking a temperature check on our stakeholders. Here, we're reviewing the organisation of our 500 staff to focus our efforts on prevention and to support our new Children Area Partnerships, whose purpose in essence is to ensure that services are based on the needs of children and families. The borough is now divided into 14 such partnerships, bringing school heads and other children's professionals together to focus on early intervention through understanding issues affecting the local area.