LAST week, Full Council adopted the Administration’s vision, four priorities, and 30 pledges. There was a healthy debate and even an opportunity to consider an alternative vision, but in the end, there was cross-party support for the original proposals recommended by cabinet.

That debate was just the beginning. This week the hard work started to make all the changes that will turn these aspirations into results.

We cannot achieve the vision, priorities, and pledges without the help of others – in fact, in the spirit of the place-shaping role the council must assume, we designed them deliberately to be things that the local authority cannot deliver alone.

We also designed them to be things that will, over time, require a very different way of working for all those in the council, both elected members and employees. That is why we took a whole day to brief as many of our employees as possible.

It is commonplace these days to mistrust anything a politician says and there was some healthy scepticism and robust challenges from staff.

I am confident because this Administration can point to the 50 promises that we used to provide focus for the council from 2006 to 2010. We delivered almost all of these.

Regardless of whatever people felt about this particular vision, there was a common acceptance of how much the Borough needed something.

One group of residents will face more changes than any other because of this vision and that is all 57 of your local elected councillors at the Civic.

If Swindon is to be successful, we have to be brave and learn how to release some of the formal controls that we have enjoyed so long.

Instead of sitting in the council’s meeting rooms passing resolutions and giving instructions to officers, councillors will have a far greater role out in the community. It will become much less of a politician's role to run services, or to oversee staff employed by the local authority to deliver those functions. Where once members could issue instructions, we will now only be able to invite or request support from partners.

There may be some people who are unnerved by this. We are departing from how councils have operated for over 100 years. However, where else in Swindon would you walk into a business in 2015 and expect it to function in a way that someone from 1900 would feel at home?

I have to admit some apprehension, but mostly I am eager with anticipation about the possibility to shape the Borough for the future.

The work of all councillors, not just the administration, will be far more visible, making us all more accountable individually.