A common response to austerity from councils across the UK has been to become more commercial in carrying out their business. We’re a large organisation that commissions and delivers a broad range of services to our citizens and we must ensure we properly charge for our services, procure efficiently and manage contracts effectively. Every penny generated through these efforts will help to maintain services and jobs.
We also need to become more commercial in finding new income opportunities. This week the Leadership Team of Directors and Heads of Service held a workshop to develop our commercial strategy. The aim was to generate ideas and create the right culture across the council for increasing income. We heard about examples from across the UK such as councils charging companies to dispose of their confidential waste, providing commercial catering and offering funeral services. When you think about it, we’re already involved in this kind of work so it’s not a huge step for us to develop our existing services and offer them to new customers to bring in more money. And Richard Mears, our car parking manager, explained how he’s been working with our commercial team to sell city centre parking spaces to local firms. We know we face declining budgets in the coming years so we want to raise new income to replace the reduced funding from the government. The next stage is for us collectively to develop the Commercial Strategy and to feed into the up-coming budget discussions. Further workshops with be held with Leadership Team and Cabinet in the coming weeks and months as we complete the strategy and action plan.
APSE award-winners
Last night we picked up two national APSE awards for our waste management service and our highways team, winning service team of the year. We narrowly missed out on the overall council of the year and our building services team was also shortlisted in two categories for service team and workforce development. Well done to everyone involved.
Love the Lagoon
The Love the Lagoon campaign has taken off this week with more than 25,000 views of our online videos. Thousands of people have engaged on Facebook (which shows it is generating interest). MPs raised the issue at Welsh Questions in Parliament and one MP directly mentioned our campaign.
Now we’ll be putting more focus now onto getting people to post videos of support. I’d encourage staff who support the project to post either directly or through our communications team.
Culture
Another major campaign we’ve launched is to get support for our City of Culture bid. Banners are popping up to generate support. Winning the title would generate millions of pounds for Swansea’s economy, also attracting a year-long programme of top quality events, activities, exhibitions, concerts and shows. With the winner due to be announced at the end of the year, we need to show the independent judging panel just how much Swansea wants and needs this title. Head here to see how you can help.
Passing the baton
It might have been a wet and windy Tuesday morning but Swansea provided its usual warm welcome for the Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton’s Relay. Swansea had the pleasure of welcoming the baton into Wales where it had travelled from the Isle of Man. Making the most of our coastal assets the Baton made a dramatic entrance by sea when it was delivered to Knab by the Mumbles RNLI. The baton was then passed, by the Deputy Leader, Cllr Clive Lloyd, to the first of our celebrity Baton Bearers, boxer Enzo Maccarinelli.
I was considering running a caption competition for the photo of the Deputy Leader and Enzo but it would probably not be a good career move! Our teams within Cultural Services – Events, Marketing and Sports Development did a great job of setting the standard for the Welsh leg of the relay.
High 5s
On Tuesday the judging panel for the High 5 Awards met to assess this year’s entries. I wasn’t looking forward to chairing it given the 156 nominations, all of which deserve recognition, and was expecting a long and fractious meeting. To my surprise and delight there was strong consensus among the judges and the winners were eventually agreed unanimously. The awards ceremony will take place next month at the Liberty Stadium.
Crest
Last July I wrote about my visit to CREST (Community Recovery Education and Skills Training) in Cwmbwrla. There’s an open day next Thursday and Friday where the service will be exhibiting the work of people who attend the centre on the themes of recovery and stigma.
Leave a Reply