A huge effort this week has gone into finalising our budget proposals for next year.
We’ve spent months discussing options with Members and we’ve now published the report for Cabinet on December 14. The budget has been a consistent theme in my blog so you’ll know the issues we face in terms of government funding, new spending pressures and a number of our services are over-spent due to rising demand and pressures.
It hasn’t been easy to reach this point and I want to thank the officers across the council who’ve been involved in preparing proposals and completing EIAs, along with Ben Smith, Sarah Willis and the finance team and staff in Access to Services, Communications and Democratic Services.
Once Cabinet agree proposals we’ll be consulting with the public and staff. We’ve planned a series of staff roadshows in January where you can learn more and have your say.
CMT has agreed further steps to reduce this year’s over-spend. On top of the vacancy freeze and spending restrictions, we’re reducing non-essential spending in the following ways:
- Review and reduce the number of p-cards.
- A workshop for staff with “buyer access” to Oracle.
- All non-essential items removed from the i-procurement catalogue.
- Non-essential spending approved by:
- ICT hardware and software – Jo Harley.
- Furniture – Geoff Bacon.
- Advertising and bulk printing (non MFD) – Lee Wenham
- Publicity/promotions – Lee Wenham
It’s more important than ever that we all support these measures to help reduce our in-year spending.
Phones
We’ve all been facing problems with our phone network in the past week. But we’ve been working on a modern, longer-term solution with the roll-out of Unified Communications. The current system is old and will continue to give us problems, so the sooner we can complete this move to the new system the better. My thanks to our networks team who’ve been working so hard to fix these issues and to those staff helping us switch to the new system.
City Deal
On Thursday the Leader and I attended an event for businesses as a means of updating them on the City Deal. Around 200 businesses attended and the progress made was recognised by all. There was a welcome sense of real anticipation and positivity among the businesses given some of their concerns over Brexit and the economy. The leadership demonstrated by the public sector was warmly welcomed. The Welsh and UK governments will shortly be conducting an independent review of the whole City Deal as the final stage of the project approval process and I hope they use this review to streamline processes and remove bureaucracy from the current approval arrangements.
Openreach
Having had discussions with Openreach for the past few weeks, it’s good to see the roll-out of the fibre network in Swansea. The initial phase for SA1, SA2 and SA5 will hopefully be quickly followed by a broader roll-out to put Swansea in the leading pack for digital connectivity in the UK. It’ll be about 24 times faster than the current UK average. Thanks to all who’ve been involved in delivering this latest sign of private sector confidence in the city.
New First Minister
Mark Drakeford has been elected Leader of Welsh Labour which means that he is likely to become First Minister in due course. I hope his appointment will give local government more clarity on reorganisation, regional working and the final budget settlement. The Leader and Cabinet Members have worked closely with him in his previous Welsh Government roles so I hope we can build on this.
Supporting families
We’ve received a toolkit from the Home Office to support EU citizens and their families to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme. Hopefully, it’ll help our staff deal with key issues such as housing, benefits, voting and safeguarding among others. We’ll provide further information to staff shortly.
Congratulations and thanks
Colleagues in Social Services won a total of 16 awards at Tuesday’s Patient Choice Awards. The awards are a chance for patients, service users, carers, family and friends to say thanks to those who made a real difference by providing outstanding care. It’s great to get this recognition and I know many staff go the extra mile. Well done to all of you.
The team at our baling plant went the extra mile when a family got in touch to say their young daughter’s much-loved toy bunny had been accidentally placed in the waste compactor. She is about to go for her 39th operation and she’d had the toy as a baby. Plant supervisor Martin Rees along with Paul Brown, Andrew Phillips and Lee Howells emptied the skip and searched for the toy, eventually finding it after 45 minutes, much to the relief of the family. Thank you boys, that’s a lovely effort.
Our Property team have been praised in the Allotment and Leisure Gardener magazine. Having helped allotment holders manage their own sites, it said we’d done “everything to help this transition run smoothly”, and added: “Here in Swansea it’s an exciting future for the allotment movement.”
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