A New Year's message from our Chief Executive, Mark Wynn

Hello everyone, and welcome to our first video of 2026.

I really hope you’ve managed to have a rest over the Christmas period and recharge your batteries. Although I suspect that for many of you it already feels like a long time ago, and it’s back to business as usual.

But just while I’m on the subject of Christmas, can I say a huge thank you to those of you who worked over the Christmas period - whether that was looking after our vulnerable residents or out gritting our roads. We’re really, really grateful for everyone who worked during that time.

Looking forward to some of our priorities for 2026, we will continue to work on special educational needs and the improvements in adult social care, and carry on the great work that you delivered in 2025. There is still quite a lot for us to do in the coming year.

There’s also an exciting new opportunity for us as a council, as we begin work to understand much more about the various communities across Lancashire and how they may want slightly different services from the county council. You’ll have seen that we created a Place Directorate this year to start moving that agenda forward.

There will also be significant work for all of us in continually driving efficiencies within the organisation and helping deliver the budget that the council is about to approve.

On a personal note, I’m genuinely excited about the opportunities that 2026 offers us and offers the council. It will be great to continue working together to provide high‑quality services for our residents.

LGR will be around, and that will be an unsettling period for us, but it’s also a huge opportunity to think differently about how we provide services and how we improve residents’ lives. If we continue to work as we did last year - embracing change, building on the strengths that we clearly have in this organisation - there’s a real chance to make a huge difference in the year ahead. And we’ll be spending a lot of time this year investing in our people.

At the end of the day, it’s you who provide services to residents, and we want to harness all the skills you bring and continue developing our workforce for the future.

And finally, with so much happening in 2026, it’s really important that we stay connected. You’ve got a commitment from me to keep posting updates on the intranet, sharing video messages and sending out key messages. I encourage you to look out for those - for example, a budget update went out only a couple of days ago.

And from me, a personal thank you for making last year such a great one. It was my first year in this job, and it’s been a real privilege to serve the people of Lancashire. I look forward to 2026, and I hope we can make it the best year for Lancashire yet.