{"id":12867,"date":"2013-11-14T14:20:25","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T13:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12867"},"modified":"2013-11-18T11:47:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T10:47:36","slug":"when-the-going-gets-tough-then-the-tough-get-going-if-not-now-then-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12867","title":{"rendered":"When the going gets tough, then the tough get going (if not now, then soon)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost two years ago, I was appointed\u00a0the independent Chair of the\u00a0Customer Challenge Group<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0 South East Water<\/a>\u00a0which supplies drinking water to 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. Our prime role is to challenge the construction and composition of the Business Plan for 2015-2020 which the company will be submitting to the regulator Ofwat on 2 December. The deadline for the CCG report is the same.<\/p>\n

Unlike most CCG Chairs, I have chosen to draft the report myself. The drafting itself is not a problem – I’ve written many submissions to regulators and Government Departments and even wrote a book <\/a>once. But most of the subject matter is relatively new to me and complex, there are many pieces of customer research to consult, and there are repeated drafts of the company’s Business Plan of around 250 pages to study and reference.<\/p>\n

I am currently working on Draft 6 of the report and at the moment it runs to 80 pages.<\/p>\n

So this has been the most intense three-month period of work since I technically took early retirement almost 12 years ago. In such circumstances, I wanted to have a holiday to which to look forward – and regular readers of NightHawk will know that I love to travel to foreign countries.<\/p>\n

Therefore I have just booked a three-week holiday for Vee and me which will involve a guided tour of five countries in Central America<\/a>: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This will be early in 2014.<\/p>\n

If you’ve been to any of these countries and have some tips or you live there and have some advice, do post a comment or \u00a0 e-mail me<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"