Archives for October 2017

Budget update

I know it’s a common theme for me to highlight the tough financial situation we face, but it’s the biggest issue facing us as a council and individuals as we strive to maintain and improve services. Each year is getting tougher and the decisions we have to make are becoming more difficult.

This week the directors and I have been locked in budget discussions with Cabinet.  As I mentioned last week this is huge challenge for us, particularly considering the medium-term three-year budget projections.  Next year alone we have to save £26 million. I’ve re-issued the spending restrictions so please take the necessary steps to help us reduce costs in the coming months.

We’ve been looking at every service we provide and there are difficult choices to be made. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with the Cabinet to develop these discussions into specific budget proposals for consultation. Thanks to Ben Smith and Sarah Willis from Finance for their supporting work throughout the week.  I know this is always a worrying time for staff and I’ll keep you updated as things progress.

Senior staff changes

Following the appointment of Sarah Caulkin as Interim Director of Resources, some further changes to the structure within Digital and Transformation Services have become necessary. Jo Harley has been appointed Head of Digital and Transformation Services on an interim basis to back-fill Sarah’s substantive role.  Jo will now make some minor changes within Digital Services, creating development opportunities for some of the existing team leaders.  While working as Director of Resources, Sarah will also continue with the duties of her previous role as Chief Transformation Officer, and that position will not be back-filled. This arrangement makes effective use of the current departmental budget and also makes a small saving which will help towards our cost reduction plans.

Great results

Design Print, our in-house graphic design and print team, and Tourism Development, in Cultural Services have been recognised in the annual Apcom UK awards for public sector print and communication managers. ‘Best use of Digital full colour’ showcased a commercial job by Design Print and ‘Best Cross Media’ recognised the brand development, management, design and execution of the Enjoy Swansea Bay campaign by our Tourism team. Design Print was also runner-up as ‘Team of the Year’ and took highly commended awards for environmental awareness and full colour litho printing.

Two of our initiatives have reached the final of the Go Awards Wales, Excellence in Public Procurement.  Beyond Bricks and Mortar has been shortlisted under the Procurement Innovation in Government and Housing. A joint submission between Adult Social Care, the Procurement team and Beyond Bricks and Mortar is also shortlisted in Procurement Innovation in Social Care and Health Category. This is great news and well done to everyone involved.

One of our Flying Start projects has just had a fantastic inspection report from the CSSIW. Inspectors looked at four areas at the Seaview project and gave the following ratings:

• Excellent – Children’s Wellbeing
• Excellent – Environment
• Good – Care & Development
• Good – Leadership & Management

Inspectors noted that the areas with ‘excellent ratings’ were sector-leading and both of the ‘good ratings’ were on the cusp of excellent which is really pleasing. These results are important as I mentioned last week about the need for us all to help give children the best possible start in life. This is another great example of how we do this on the ground – well done to everyone involved. I’m delighted and proud of what you’ve achieved.

Continuing this theme, Mark Thompson, who leads St Helen’s Primary School, is attending the grand finale of the Pearson Teaching Awards in London this Sunday where he’s shortlisted for a Gold Award in the Headteacher of the Year category. There’s been a remarkable transformation at St Helen’s, both in its physical appearance and in pupil achievement and attendance.  Mark was recognised for his exceptional leadership when he won the Welsh category earlier this year and I wish the very best of luck.

Congratulations to 1,534 children and young people who completed the 19^th Summer Reading Challenge in our libraries. They were among more than 6,000 children who took part in events and is important as we bid for UK City of Culture. None of this would have been possible without the help of our library staff and 19 volunteers who worked a total of 433 hours.

Our commercial and parks teams are giving residents and businesses the chance to adopt flower beds in Victoria Park and Singleton Park’s Botanical Gardens. It’ll help us cut costs and generate income. Have a look here for more information.

Retirement

Sue Phillips, our Looked After Children’s Co-ordinator, is due to retire at the end of the month.  Sue was a teacher for many years before taking up her current role, where she’s been a dedicated advocate for looked after children for over 16 years. I wish Sue well in her retirement. I regularly pay tribute to staff who’ve given long service or who are retiring. I don’t want to miss anyone out, so please let me know if a colleague is retiring.

Stormy weather

I would like to place on the record my thanks to the staff who responded to the challenges caused by last weekend’s bad weather.  The storms caused a lot of damage and our teams responded magnificently to the calls for help from residents.  A number of councillors have asked me to pass on their thanks. It looks like we may have a similar situation with Storm Brian this weekend so I hope we can respond in the same way to any problems it causes.

Halloween

We’ve worked with the Mark Jermin Stage School to organise a city centre event in the build-up to Halloween on Saturday October 28. You can find out more info about Spooks in the City here .

 

I’m so proud of the way we as a council support young people and strive to give them the best possible start in life.

Not all children have an equal background and we all have a responsibility to support them. Many of our services work with young people every day in schools, social services and community activities to name just a few.

Last night we celebrated the achievements of young people at the annual High 5 Awards. The awards give a platform for young people’s ambition so it’s really important the awards have a legacy rather than being the end of the journey. And that’s why I was delighted to see former winners Hannah Morris-Guy and Ashley Rix who came along and told this year’s short-listed youngsters how the High 5s had inspired them to go on and achieve even more in their lives. Hannah has graduated from university and plans to go into business, while Ashley is now an apprentice at our children’s centre. To know that the High 5s may have played just a small part in their lives makes the awards worthwhile.

Around 400 youngsters were put forward for this year’s awards and a record number were Highly Commended because judges were so impressed with all the entries.

Once again Swans footballer and High 5 Ambassador Leon Britton presented the awards. He summed it up perfectly when he said: “I feel privileged to have met some of the most wonderful young people in this city. They are an inspiration to us all.”

Among the winners were a teenager who helped keep his siblings stay together after the untimely death of both their parents, youngsters who have overcome daunting illnesses to inspire others and a young dad who’s doing the best he can to give his children a great start.

All of their experiences are truly inspiring and by clicking on the awards below you can read their stories.

• Up to 13 Achievement: Ed Roberts
• Up to 13 Community: Luke Hedges
• 14 to 19 Achievement: Nicole Joyce
• 20 to 25 Community: Emma Clarke
• 20 to 25 Recognise: Tristan Clark
• Group Award: The Discovery Student Volunteering group
• Schools Award: Seaview Community Primary School Rainbow Class
• Judges’ Special Award: Skye, Lucie and Kelsey Edwards
• Ambassador Award: James Ford

Thank you to all the staff who helped organise the awards and last night’s event and to Leon and our sponsors for their continued and much-valued support.

Be the Best You Can be

Congratulations to everyone involved in last week’s staff engagement event at the National Waterfront Museum.  More than 400 staff attended and took part in a range of activities, including more than 200 who attended workshops, organised by our innovation community and our innovation officer, Rhys Curtis. It’s really pleasing that more than three-quarters of staff said they enjoyed the event. We want to do all we can to engage staff and this event is very important.

After hearing about the mind-boggling achievements of TV presenter and adventurer Lowri Morgan, I had the honour of presenting a commemorative plaque to her to celebrate her becoming an ambassador for our outdoor activity centres.

Thanks to the volunteers and our staff who supported the event by attending. I’d like to put on the record particular thanks to Ann Smith, Bob Fenwick, Rebecca Tribe, Damian James, Anne Sennett, Mark Gosney, Katja Davies and Andrew Francis. Also the fantastic Cake Stall raised £110 for Maggie’s for their unit at Singleton Hospital.

I was able to visit almost all of the stands to hear about the great work being done across our departments and thank the sponsors for their support. I also managed to score 18/20 in the match the Welsh and English place names competition!

Budget

On Tuesday the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government announced this year’s provisional local government settlement.  The Council is facing a 0.1% reduction in its budget for 2018/19.  Although this is slightly better than we expected the challenge of setting the revenue budget is made more difficult when you consider the spending pressures that we face.  Inflationary and wage increases along with demographic pressures means we’ll have to make some difficult decisions for the coming year.  The following years will be even more difficult given the 1.5% reduction indicated by the Cabinet Secretary.  We need to make sure that we control spending this year so that we don’t make this challenge any more difficult and CMT have therefore reissued the spending restrictions.  You can find them here. It is essential that all staff comply with these.

Corporate Management Team and the Cabinet have cleared diaries next week so that we can jointly develop savings proposals for consultation in the coming months.  I will keep you up to date with how this develops.

Legal witnesses

Sometimes staff are required to give witness statements or appear in court as part of their duties.  This can be a challenging experience as I know from personal experience at County Court and in employment tribunals.  Our legal team are always on hand to help and it’s important that staff in this situation seek advice from them.  They’ve produced an advice note that can be found here.

 

You may have seen reports in the media about the commitment of councils in the Swansea Bay region to the City Deal.  This was triggered by a report to the Cabinet in Neath Port Talbot Council earlier this week which identified a number of challenges and risks that remain to be dealt with.  Some of the issues had already been dealt with and any remaining issues will be tackled through the finalisation of the Joint Working Agreement which is currently in progress.

By its very nature the City Deal process is complex and time-consuming given the number of partners and the range of projects, so the flagging up of risks and challenges is a necessary phase of development.  However all of this is under control and the joint working agreement will be signed before the end of the calendar year.  We will be reporting to our Cabinet and Council when the details are finalised.

By way of reassurance all councils have reiterated their commitment to the City Deal, work is motoring ahead on the preparation of business cases and a number of projects are already underway.

On the subject of regional working I gave a presentation to the Regional Working Scrutiny Inquiry on Monday where I shared some personal observations on the subject.  My presentation can be found here. But the main point is the division of Wales into three regions and the establishment of joint governance committees as I described a few blogs ago.

I suspect that the next challenge will be for the three regions to develop a vision and proposal for joint working across service areas and so this will inevitably impact on all of us who work in local government; officers and councillors.  More on this in the coming weeks.

Budget

We expect the provisional budget settlement for local government by the middle of next week but early indications are that it is going to be a difficult budget round for all councils.  Corporate Management Team has been considering options but we have a lot more work to do if we are to meet the challenging savings targets that the settlement is likely to require.

Be the best you can be

A quick reminder that the staff engagement event is taking place at the National Waterfront Museum today.   Details can be found here.  I will report back on it next week.

Asset Management

We will soon start detailed discussions with Coastal Housing Group after agreeing to conditionally sell our Pipehouse Wharf depot to them.  Thanks to our property team for all the efforts they have put in to deliver this. Up to 150 new homes could be constructed there in future and staff currently based there are being kept updated.

Arena progress

We’re making good progress on plans for the Indoor Arena, the centre-piece of the Swansea Central development. Designs, including a cutting-edge digital ‘skin’ for the building, are being worked-up with our partners Rivington and Ambassador Theatre Group. The digital skin will envelop the outside of the building and have the potential to show-off what’s going on inside as well as advertise other events.

Congratulations

The Childcare Legal Team have been shortlisted as a finalist in the Lawyers in Local Government Awards for 2017. The award is for People Related Team of the Year which recognises outstanding achievement by a local authority team in any field of law relating to people including children law, adult social care, health and employment. My congratulations to the team for this excellent peer recognition. This is an outstanding achievement as it is a national award. The winner is announced on November 24 in Birmingham.

Congratulations also to Mark Davies, a Business Support Manager in Adult Services by day and a long-standing member of the Royal Lifesaving Society in his spare time. He’s just been awarded an RLSS Silver Cross for 20 years’ service to the organisation at his local club in Neath.

Love the lagoon

The #lovethelagoon campaign has been making waves at the party conferences over the last week or so as well as here in Swansea.

Pupils from Dan-y-Graig Primary earlier this week helped launch a children’s colouring competition to help raise awareness of the lagoon and the benefits that would go with it. If your child’s school wants to join in there’s more information here.

The Prime Minister said this week she recognises there’s support for the lagoon in Wales, so we need to keep reminding her of those words.

A tourism boost

I was pleased to see that the cruise ship Hanseatic came to Swansea last weekend.  Some 180, mainly German passengers  enjoyed an excursion to Gower and used our shuttle service into the city, stopping off at the Museum and Castle Square. In addition, there were two trips to the Brecon Mountain Railway and Cardiff Castle.

The Lord Mayor joined the Captain on board and exchanged commemorative plaques, before enjoying a guided tour of the ship.  He also met a number of passengers from our partner City Mannheim who posed for photos with him.

Agile working

Thank you to those who’ve been involved with our first big moves towards agile working. More than 200 staff now work out of the Civic Centre’s innovative and varied new agile space; they’re embracing this new, modern way of working. The change has meant new ways of thinking by all officers going agile. It’s starting to pay off; sickness levels are down, productivity is up.  The Corporate Management Team are close to agreeing proposals that would see agile working rolled out for CMT.

Farewell

September 30th was the last working day for another long serving colleague, Carol Tobin, who completed 39 years service.  Carol has spent the last 17 years on Direct Payments as a Direct Payments Finance Officer in Social Services.  We wish her a happy retirement.