MY main task this week is to select the key players who will form the council’s cabinet team for the coming year.

Like the England Football Manager Roy Hodgson, that means balancing those who are available, the skills and potential they possess, and the work that team overall needs to do. The one consolation is that at least I don’t have to do this in the tropical heat.

Being a cabinet member entails a lot of work. Studying for an Open University degree will take 16-18 hours a week. However, a cabinet member should put aside around twice that; it really is a second full-time job. This presents a particular challenge in Swindon, as many of the councillors have full time employment.

Many people ask me why the role is so demanding. First, even though you are a cabinet member, you also retain all your duties and commitments as a ward councillor. You can never neglect these.

You have to cope with all the emails from council officers, partner organisations, and residents that will come during office hours.

This can easily be 50 to 100 items a day, especially if you are preparing a key report for cabinet or council.

If you are leading a controversial proposal, you are faced with many more emails and letters, some demanding an immediate, detailed response.

As a cabinet member, you are also the spokesman for your area of responsibility. You are there to respond to the relevant news outlets, many of which are working to tight deadlines.

You must also defend your policies to fellow councillors at cabinet, scrutiny and full council, and be answerable to the public.

On top of that, you have to manage the many additional meetings that are necessary, most of which are not in public and are not included in the annual attendance figures. The actual total is much higher than the published figure.

Above all, you will have no additional staff specifically to support your cabinet members. I have visited other councils where each member of cabinet has an office and two or more staff.

That is not something we would want here, as we try to provide the best service without placing such a burden on the council tax payer.

l I couldn’t write this column without noting that tomorrow is the 70th Anniversary of the D-Day landings.

I hope we will all take a moment to think about the sacrifice made by British, Canadian, Free French, and American forces, which marked the beginning of the Allies’ assault to liberate Europe. (Of course, troops had already freed Rome two days earlier.) So many of the liberties we enjoy today would have been impossible if that great invasion had failed.