September Newsletter 2023
What happened to the English summer?
As a resident of the aforementioned fine land it might be predictable to start this quarterly newsletter with ‘the weather’. However, if ever the state of meteorological being was ever worth note it was this year and more particularly the last 3 months. Starting with much promise in May, and - it should be noted - your author and family had decided, having been elsewhere the past 2 summers and missed some real doozies of the British sunny season (which elicited such responses as “ you can keep the med” and “why be anywhere else when it’s like this”.....why indeed!), that we would stay in at home in Devon for the School holidays. Just two small brief bookend sojourns consisting of a week in Scotland (go in July they said, best time they said) and a long weekend at an overpriced cabin in the woods at a park(c) embracing the outdoor lifestyle concept malarkey (early September) - nothing else needed, just long warm weeks of beach walks, rock pool gazing, paddling and generally feeling self satisfied about living on the south coast……
I’ll cut to the chase:
It rained in Scotland
It rained in the woods and especially heavily so while attempting an alfresco swim.
In short, it rained….a lot. Whilst, incidentally, meantime and simultaneously, we have a hosepipe ban in the South West….sigh!
So, before I switch the day job from data to waterproof leisure wear, time for some updates and news in the usual fashion:
Updates:
Continuing from the June edition, the Councillor Leadership, Cabinet and Committee updates are now all but finished and - readers will recall this was a very large election year - we thoroughly recommend that subscribers take either full or regular updates. A link to the summary of the election can be seen below.
Following some (late) spring cleaning across our job functions and organisation types, we have removed a number of legacy functional categories from circulation and also tidied up a few organisation types - including blending our Local Gov Purchasing Organisations into a single type.
The NHS database has seen significant changes over the past 3 months - including as seen below - over 38,000 changes and a not insignificant churn of replacement postholders. Additional focus is being placed on the Integrated Care Boards as we look to build out the coverage of existing and new post types - more to follow in the next edition on that side. July also saw St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Southport & Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust merge to form the new Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
As Schools and Colleges have gone back, the Education team have now been focussed on changes that occurred over the summer. An already significant 16,000 changes to report in the past 90- days here, but a lot more to follow across the rest of September and October. We have also been looking at MAT’s in a lot of detail and ensuring that our School to Trust linkages are current and factor in recent memberships, conversions and mergers.
New:
A small (or large if you prefer) apology to kick off this section. We shared a link in the last newsletter to our election summary that didn’t work (handy), so re-sharing here now with a working version:.
The 2023 local election summary can actually be seen here.
Not unrelated to which, we have also recently published a live ‘seat tracker’which provides monthly tracking of the total number of seats across Local and National Government held by Political Parties. Well worth a look, it has colours and everything.
More exciting news. We have rebranded our Public Sector Network platform and added some wizzy new designs and animations. To celebrate this, we have also launched a few new products focused on those supplying Government and Public Services. Including our new #deepdive package - aimed at telling you all we can about your current coverage and potential across the Public Sector market.
Interesting:
You’d think generating waffle for public consumption every 3 months would be enough, right? - but no, apparently we have more to say to you. To accomplish this endeavour, we have two new sections on the Oscar website:
The Oscar Blog - yep, one of those things. A collection of semi-related musings and insights from across Oscar and the Public Sector. There’s already a few articles for your perusal available ranging from Education through Healthcare and politics. You can have a peek here
Newsletter Section - not necessarily the best placement here - mentioning a newsletter section within a newsletter - oh the paradox. However, this is a place you can read archived versions of this thing (including in due course this very missive), as well as those of our new weekly emails. If you so wish, access can be gained here.
Speaking of; if, dear reader, you would like to be alerted to new content on either of these pages AND receive a weekly summary email of all things Oscar AND receive our recent Guide to the UK Public Sector, you can subscribe to our new weekly ‘Spotlight’ email. This can be done here, or you can just reply to this email and say something pithy, witty or generally irreverent - like “I enjoyed wasting my time reading your email so much, I’d like more of the same”
Looking forward to the deluge of those! (does anyone actually read this far down?).
Meantime, here’s to a DRY autumn full of evenings by the fire, crunchy leaves and apple pie!
James and team at Oscar
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