Archives for October 2018

Coping with austerity

October 26, 2018 by Martin 2 Comments

This week CMT reviewed the financial outturn for the second quarter of the year and collectively agreed the need to further reinforce the current arrangements for budget monitoring through a range of corrective actions, targeted immediate spend reduction and further increased spending control on all vacancies and contracts. On top of the in-year budget overspends we currently face we know the provisional local government funding settlement falls far short of covering the cost of our pressures. The comments of the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government this week were less than encouraging for us but I’m grateful to the Leader and colleagues for continuing with vigour to press the case for a better financial settlement for councils.

The combined effects of the in-year overspend and likely budget gap for next year means we have to take immediate steps to mitigate this. One of those steps is a temporary vacancy freeze across the council. The budget situation gets more and more difficult to manage each year. To date, we’ve largely been able to redeploy staff where roles have been lost and services have reduced, while avoiding compulsory redundancy. However, that has got more and more difficult each year and this year will undoubtedly be the hardest year given the settlement, so by taking steps now not to fill vacant posts we hope to be able to maximise redeployment opportunities for our staff in the future. CMT will continue to determine whether any posts are essential or exceptional, but it’s expected that only compelling cases will even come forward to CMT, as the starting presumption is simply to not fill the post. We know not filling posts will in some cases cause extra pressures, but we hope you understand that we’re taking these steps now to help minimise the number of compulsory redundancies. It’s not a decision that’s being taken lightly and we’ll keep it under review, but I cannot overstate the extent of the challenge that’s facing us.

There may be some further news on Monday in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, but what that means for local government, and particularly us in Swansea, may not be immediately clear. Adam Hill, our new Deputy Chief Executive, starts on Monday and one of the first things he’ll be working on is the budget consultation. We need to engage staff and the public to help understand the reductions we have to make and the implications for staff and the public. Thank you for your continued support and dedication, we’ll keep you updated on further developments.

Tidal Lagoon

Our efforts to deliver the lagoon project have hit the headlines this week with the publication of an official notice seeking private sector partners and investors to express their interest in it. The Leader and some officers are part of a taskforce that’s concluded this has to be a private-sector led development, unlike the previous proposal that relied on government subsidy. We’ll see what interest there’s out there and then decide the best way to proceed. Council also backed a motion last night supporting the lagoon.

Fire in Mount Pleasant

You may have seen news coverage of the fire that happened in the city centre this week. What you don’t see is how well the Council dealt with it and worked alongside the first responders. My personal thanks go to Craig Gimblett for his calm but measured co-ordination of our response to the emergency. Thankfully no-one was injured and the displaced residents were assisted by our teams.

Have your say

There’s just a week to go for you to give your views in the staff survey. Thanks to everyone who’s responded so far and for those who haven’t please try to make time between now and Friday, November 2.

Congratulations

Well done to our highway maintenance teams for reaching a landmark 10,000 pothole repairs since we launched the scheme in 2016. This has had a really positive impact in terms of residents having faith in us maintaining roads.

It was great to see the Lord Mayor host a reception for our Helping Hands and Bully Buddies volunteers on Wednesday. They do great work in supporting staff in their own time and this was recognition for their efforts. Well done and thank you.

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery needs your vote

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is shortlisted in this year’s Heritage Angels Awards for ‘Best major regeneration of an historic building or place for projects in excess of £5m’. The redeveloped building is an excellent architectural example of combining the old and the new building elements. Since re-opening, it’s been able to offer a wide-ranging exhibition programme featuring Welsh, UK and international artists which is accessible and open to everyone. We now need your vote for the public award. Please vote here (voting is limited to one vote per person) before midnight on November 4.

Yes, we are a good parent

October 19, 2018 by Martin 2 Comments

In my 20^th July blog I asked the question, “Are we a good parent?”. Well this week we had the answer with the CIW inspection report into our Child and Family Service which identified good quality practice with positive outcomes for many children and young people.

The inspectors found the service was effectively led and staff were dedicated, well supported and enjoyed working for a local authority where there was a culture of support. The children and young people they heard from were generally positive about the support they received and were appreciative of the relationships with their social workers. The report also found there’s good support in place for care leavers who were helped with a range of housing options, employment and further educational opportunities and access to benefits.

The report identified a number of areas for improvement and that although some children and young people are achieving good educational outcomes and no looked after children have been permanently excluded from school, there’s scope to improve support and opportunities for others. I’m less concerned about this because we know it’s already a current area of focus with some great work being done in our education service. We’ve reorganised this service and invested in it and we’re also in the process of developing a new £8 million purpose-built centre for children educated other than at school (EOTAS). In fact, Cabinet yesterday approved the contract to build it and if we get Welsh Government funding we hope to start work next month.

Despite the positive findings in the report there’s no room for complacency and achieving the best well-being outcomes for our children, particularly those in our care, will remain a top priority for CMT. However, I must thank all the staff involved in providing these services. It’s rare to get such a positive endorsement from the regulators and you can all feel justifiably proud of the work you do.

More good news

Our annual review of performance highlights the great work our staff do and the documents are available on the Cabinet meeting page from 18 October. We have to publish the report as part of the Well-Being of Future Generations Act. Basically, we set out what we plan to achieve and then we have to report against those objectives. I know the budget news is gloomy at the moment, but the dedication of our staff never diminishes and I’m really grateful to everyone for their efforts.

Education

I attended two meetings with head teachers from the primary schools (YCA) and the secondary schools (SCCASH) to explain the budget settlement and the likely impacts in the coming years. It’s clear to me schools have the same concerns as the rest of the Council in relation to the funding priorities at national level and I hope we can work closely with them on a concerted campaign to communicate our collective feelings.

I also took the opportunity to explain the changes we’re making to our regional school improvement consortium, ERW. We’ve changed the management arrangements and the lead officer for ERW is now Geraint Rees, an experienced head teacher who has been working with Welsh Government on a range of education programmes. We’ll also be developing a revised model of joint working across the regions and I know Geraint will be talking to as many people as possible to make sure we get this right. I’m confident we can improve on the current arrangements and deliver what schools want and deserve in terms of support for school improvement.

Responding to the storms

Our highways and cleansing teams did a great job keeping people safe and motorists on the move during Storm Callum.

Long before the storm came they’d cleared roads of debris to prevent flooding, checked high-risk watercourses for blockages, checked the sea walls and shifted wind-blown sand from Oystermouth Road.

When the storm arrived they tackled localised flooding, setting up diversions and offering advice to motorists and residents near the Morriston by-pass cut-off due to a flood. One team even caught a fish swimming along the A4067 which had to be closed for a spell due to the deluge.

I’m also aware that lots of staff went about their normal duties during the storm. My thanks to everyone involved; it was a terrific team effort.

Well done and thank you

We’ve been successful in attracting funding to install innovative energy design and features into new council homes.

The £1.5m Innovative Housing Programme grant from the Welsh Government will help install features such as solar panels and battery-powered energy. Well done to the housing team for their hard work.

Staff and service users at Fforestfach Day Service recently held a festival staging bands and solo artists.

More than 200 people attended and for many of them it was their first experience of a concert. They also set up bars and sold food.

It was so successful they plan to do it again next summer. Well done to everyone involved in a great team effort.

Hate Crime Awareness Week ends tomorrow and the council has been playing its part with partners like Safer Swansea and Victim Support to highlight this blight on our communities.

No-one has to put up with it as a victim or as a witness.

It can be reported FREE on 0300 3031982 or online at the Report Hate Crime website.

My thanks to council colleagues involved in the campaign.

A perfect storm

October 12, 2018 by Martin 6 Comments

The provisional settlement announcement was much as expected this week and confirmed our fears that the prioritisation of health and Welsh Government economy and infrastructure departments would be at the expense of local councils. In short our overall revenue budget will stay the same, but we’ll have to absorb inflationary increases, pay awards, pension contributions and demographic pressures. As I’ve said before this will have major impacts on services and jobs and CMT this week discussed measures to control in-year spending as well as proposals to close the budget gap.

I have to set out the position honestly to you. It’s inevitable given the current year position that we’re going to need to exercise tighter control over vacant posts as redundancies will be inevitable. We need to ensure there are redeployment opportunities for staff who may be displaced by the budget reductions and we’ll do our best to minimise the impact of cuts. We need to be equally honest with the public about service levels and to manage their expectations.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to keep the pressure on Welsh Government for an improvement in our financial position. The combination of increased austerity with rising inflationary and demographic pressures is causing a perfect storm for councils and the impacts of that need to be clearly understood at national government level.

Great news

This week the Care Inspectorate Wales’ published its inspection of our Foster Swansea teams and it makes very good reading. It found the service is well managed with enthusiastic and motivated foster carers and staff. Foster carers spoke positively about the supervision and support they’ve received and there were many examples of how the service has changed young peoples’ lives, helping them to achieve at school and develop new interests and skills. Congratulations to all and next week I hope to have news of the results of CIW’s recent inspection into our Child and Family Service.

A healthy relationship

This week CMT invited Tracy Myhill, chief executive of the ABMU health board, to join the Wednesday morning discussions. Over the past few years tensions have built up between councils and health boards, particularly in the areas where the responsibility for the costs of care are blurred. The NHS faces the same demographic pressures as us and the only responsible approach is to work closely to ensure that care is seamless for our citizens. It was an honest and constructive discussion and I’m confident our partnership will be a close one, along with Neath and Port Talbot council, when Bridgend leaves the Western Bay area next April.

On the topic of regional collaboration, I’m at the ERW joint committee this morning where I’ll set out a range of proposals to take the organisation forward and provide a better service to our schools. Hopefully they’ll agree my recommendations and I’ll be able to explain the way forward in more detail at meetings with head teachers and in future blogs.

Rail discussions

Following the decision to stop electrification of the main line beyond Cardiff, our staff in Highways and Transportation have been developing proposals to better connect Swansea and the region to the rest of the UK. On Tuesday I was at the DVLA for a meeting organised by the Wales Office to discuss possible rail improvements in the region. A number of proposals were discussed which in my view would be detrimental to the city and, armed with the necessary evidence thanks to Stuart Davies and Ben George, I was able to set out our position very clearly. Further meetings will follow and I hope we can secure a commitment from UK Government to invest in the region and improve line speeds which drop significantly the minute trains enter Wales.

Staff survey

Thank you to all those who’ve already completed this year’s staff survey. For those who haven’t got round to it yet, please set some time aside because it’s really important we get your view. There’s a clear commitment to act upon the findings so please have your say.

Awards

Good luck to Pontarddulais Comprehensive School headteacher Janet Waldron and St Helen’s Primary School teacher Nicola Fredrickson who’ve both been shortlisted in the national finals of this year’s Pearson Teaching Awards. The awards are an annual celebration of exceptional teachers and it’s great to have two representatives from Swansea. The ceremony takes place in London on October 21 and will be filmed and broadcast by the BBC.

And congratulations to our health and safety team who’ve been shortlisted for the CIPD best health innovation award. The team won it last year for our helping hands initiative, so good luck and well done to everyone involved.

Party time

There was a party atmosphere at Bonymaen House yesterday (Thurs) where staff and clients celebrated our residential home’s 50^th anniversary in style. Thanks to everyone who made it such a special day.

Summer Reading Challenge

I’ve been invited to the 20th Summer Reading Challenge Presentation in the Waterfront Museum on Wednesday. The theme for this year’s initiative is Mischief Makers, inspired by the much-loved children’s title ‘Beano’, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary year. Unfortunately, I can’t attend but the Lord Mayor will be presenting the winners of the challenge with their prizes. Thanks to Carole Billingham and the libraries team for their great work on this.

Inspirational young people

October 5, 2018 by Martin 8 Comments

Last night we held another great celebration of the achievements of young people at the annual High 5 awards at the Liberty Stadium. Thirteen awards were handed out to individuals and groups who’ve done some fantastic things at home, in their school and communities. More than 130 young people were nominated and it was great to see so many of them having a great time. Among the winners were a teenage fundraiser who overcame leukaemia and is now an ambassador for the charity LATCH, and a group of children who overcame barriers to education and are seizing opportunities to realise their potential in collaboration with Swansea University. These are just a few of the inspirational stories behind the awards – full details are here

Once again former Swans star Leon Britton was on hand to present awards as the High 5 Ambassador. A big thank you to everyone who helped organise the awards and the judging as well as last night’s successful event. Also, thanks to our commercial team who brought on board sponsors to provide some amazing prizes for the winners and to ensure the event was done at zero cost.

Take a look at more photos of the night here.

There’s a Facebook Live video of the awards presentation on the High5 Facebook page.

It’s also on the front page of today’s Evening Post

Budget

Well the Welsh Government made its budget intentions clear this week and it doesn’t make for happy reading for us in local government. The plans are for one year only due to the uncertainty at central government level caused by Brexit. Although we have the headline figures the detail for us in Swansea will become clearer on October 9 and 23 when the Welsh Government publishes the provisional settlement for councils and provides more details behind this week’s announcements. The headlines are that local government funding will drop by 0.3% in the face of major demographic and service pressures. The NHS budget will increase by 7.0% and the budgets of front-line Welsh Government departments will increase by between 3.6% and 13.9%. There’s no provision for the nominal funding for part of the teachers’ pay awards and nothing at all for increased teachers’ pension costs.

There was some better news on specific grants, though the impact for Swansea is not yet known. There’ll be additional money for social services and some for education, although it looks like that will all passport to schools to relieve some pressures there. Waste management grants and early intervention grants won’t be cut as had originally been planned by WG last year.

On capital support for Local Government there’s a 16% reduction in funding over the next two years which will significantly impact our future core spend on disabled facilities grants, highways and property maintenance core budgets.

For our overall planning it means the gap continues to close but we still have budget gaps in each of the next four years, more savings to find and more difficult choices for all of us. I’ll keep you posted once the details are announced.

Staff travel

Our Leadership Group (CMT and heads of service) received details yesterday on the review into our staff travel. Employees travel more than three million miles a year as part of their daily work, resulting in £1.3m in mileage claims. The review found a number of issues including a number of employee’s own cars that didn’t have a MOT and our pool cars are under-used. The review recommends a adopting a travel hierarchy where our starting point is to avoid travel where possible. If travel is necessary we should use sustainable means, followed by a pool car. Staff using their own vehicle is seen as a last resort. Studies from other councils show these changes will help reduce costs and increase productivity. But at the same time we know many staff have to travel as part of their role. The challenge for us now is to come up with an approach that works for us. We agreed to review our existing policy and to ensure it’s operated properly across the council. Also, we’ll introduce some changes in line with the recommended hierarchy initially at the Guildhall and Heol y Gors. Further details will follow as we agree those changes and timescale etc.

Your Home Your Health

This morning I travelled to the Liberty Stadium to make the introductory remarks at Your Home, Your Health; a Housing and Health Symposium organised by the Western Bay regional collaboration. The aims were to better understand the impact of poor housing on health, be clearer about our priorities for investment, improve our understanding of funding and delivery options and promote innovation. More than 100 delegates attended from local authorities, health service, housing associations and third sector. Thanks to all the staff across Western Bay who helped me to organise this important event which I hope will provide a platform for better and more integrated working across the organisations and the professions.

Staff transfer

Six of our leisure centres and the LC have now transferred to our partner Freedom Leisure. It’s meant some upheaval for the staff involved but their attitude and approach has helped make the transition smooth. The transition has also been made possible due to the hard work of a number of services including ICT, property, buildings and HR. thank you to everyone involved.

Interim head

Congratulations to Deb Reed who’s been appointed interim Head of Adult Services. Deb will be covering for Alex Williams who’s about to go on maternity leave. Best wishes to both.