Great work

It’s always important as Chief Executive to be able to highlight the council’s achievements and praise our staff.

Our trading standards team recently did some great work in helping to prosecute four people over a call centre scam. We’ve seen a number of these scams in Swansea which target the elderly and vulnerable. It’s never easy to bring successful prosecutions and it takes an awful lot of hard work from our staff. Thankfully on this occasion their efforts have been rewarded through the courts. It’s also been highlighted on BBC’s X-Ray programme where team leader Rhys Harries was interviewed. It’s not often that our trading standards team are in the spotlight so credit where credit is due. My thanks to the team involved, led by Nicola Murphy, and colleagues in legal.

Some of our Child and Family staff were recognised at this year’s BASW Cymru Social Work Awards. Helen Philpott was shortlisted in the Spirit of Social Work category, Lisa Collier in the Innovative Social Work category (Michelle Apthorpe collected her certificate for her and is pictured here) and the team at our Ty Nant home was shortlisted in the Social Work Team category. This is a great achievement and congratulations to all the staff involved.

Ania Negele, community coach in Cultural Services, has won a Sporting Excellence Award at the Evening Post Community Awards.  Ania was recognised following a successful year as a performance coach with Weightlifting Wales.  She is the first female Olympic Weightlifting Coach to represent Wales at a Commonwealth Games and is also the newly appointed Great Britain U20 Coach. Well done Ania.

A big thank you to two of our tree services staff who’ve been praised for stepping in after a disabled woman had been robbed in her own home. Matt Palmer and Paul Williams were in their council vehicle when they were approached by carer Jane Morgan seeking help in catching-up with the thief. Rather than allow her to go on alone, they made sure Mrs Morgan and her friend were safe.  The thief was later apprehended by police. Mrs Morgan later contacted the council to say how grateful she was for their help and kindness.

A group of our trainees have become the first to complete our inaugural waste management traineeships. They achieved WAMITAB NVQ level 2 in Sustainable Recycling Activities, run in conjunction with Gower College. Well done to everyone involved.

Last night’s Full Council meeting also recognised the recent achievements of some of our staff. Congratualtions went to Darran Kiley for being shortlisted for a St David’s Award for his bravery after he stepped in to confront a man armed with a knife in the city centre. Also recognised was the Corporate Health, Safety and Emergency Management Service who were shortlisted for a National Innovation Award in Health and Safety. There were congratulations too to the apprentices who picked up prizes at the Gower College Swansea Apprenticeship Awards. The council also collected the Apprenticeship Employer of the Year (250+ Employers). 

These are just some examples of the great work of our staff, if you know of any more please let me know.

On a less positive note you may have seen yesterday’s story about the regional Youth Offending Team being criticised following an inspection. It’s a disappointing report highlighting failings including management, governance, strategy and performance management. It’s important to stress this doesn’t reflect on individual staff who work extremely hard in very difficult circumstances. The regional arrangement covering Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and Swansea, including ABMU health board, is ending and each authority will in future go back to providing its own service. This will undoubtedly help to focus efforts, but that in itself is not the full solution. When we fully analyse the report we’ll have to put in place arrangements and actions to rectify the findings as quickly as practicable and this will be a major focus in the coming months.

As noted above, last night I attended my first Council meeting since returning. The last time I attended I was kindly presented with a Nottingham Forest shirt as a leaving gift and left with a smile. Last night was slightly different! However, there were lots of familiar faces on the political benches and although the agenda was relatively light compared to recent meetings where issues like the budget have dominated, I was particularly interested in the presentation by Save the Children who we’ll continue to work closely with.

Finally, the mess around Brexit continues and, whatever your personal view, I’m sure you’ll agree we all need clarity as soon as possible. As a council we’re continuing to prepare for the unknown. An example of this is we don’t even know if we’ll be taking part in the European elections on May 23. A huge amount of work has to go into elections, but how far down that road do you go when it may not even happen? This is just one example and the issues facing the public and business sectors are huge, so the sooner they sort it the better for all of us.