Archives for July 2019

Last week I mentioned we’ve been working with Cabinet to continue improving relationships between officers and councillors to achieve a strong team Swansea ethic.  The best performing and most resilient councils are those where there’s a strong councillor/officer team with clarity over roles and where mutual respect is the norm.  This isn’t just confined to CMT and Cabinet; it applies across the council to all staff and all councillors.  I recently read a report from Cheshire East Council which I found useful in setting out some of these principles which you can read here.

Put simply, councillors provide democratic mandate and set the policy framework for the Council; whereas officers provide the professional advice and expertise needed to deliver the policy framework that has been agreed by councillors.  In short, officers advise, councillors decide. Officers put policies into effect and organise the provision of services. Officers also have powers and responsibilities delegated by councillors to make decisions on behalf of the Council and these should be recorded.  Officers must act with political impartiality, serving the whole council rather than particular groups or councillors.  They have a duty to provide unbiased professional advice and, as such, may have to advise councillors that certain courses of action should not be taken.  The Council has an agreed Member/Officer Protocol in place which sets out the rules for this relationship.

For me there are some simple rules which can head off potential problems.

Rule 1: No surprises

Communication between councillors and officers is critical, along with an empathy towards each other’s roles.  Officers need to understand that many members of the public have high expectations of their ward councillors and sometimes the failure to communicate to councillors simple changes to operational services in wards can result in embarrassment and confusion.  Also at times of emergency or major incidents it’s very often the local councillor who the press and public turn to for answers.  It’s therefore essential they are kept upstream.  A problem shared is a problem halved.

Rule 2: Reasonable Expectation

When resources are stretched the likelihood of officers saying “No” to a councillor request increases.  It’s essential that services delivered in our communities are consistent and equal.  Councillors should respect that fact and in my experience they generally do.  This also requires councillors taking advice from the right officers rather than immediately escalating issues to senior officers.  In return officers should be clear in setting out what can reasonably be expected and finding other ways to assist. 

Rule 3: No problems without solutions

My personal view is officers should never present councillors with a problem without a solution, however unpalatable that solution may be.  Our role as officers is to advise and we must ensure we do that with options and professional advice.

Rule 4: Mutual trust and respect

The Code of Conduct sets out the rights and responsibilities of officers and councillors to each other and the processes for dealing with any breaches.  One of the quickest ways of damaging a council’s reputation and performance is for mutual trust and respect to break down and for standards of behaviour to deteriorate. Although these rules are observed in the vast majority of instances I still see a small number of examples where they are not.  We’ve come a long way on this journey over the past five years and I’d say the now have one of the most positive relationships between councillors and officers in Wales, if not the U.K.  I hope we can continue to work together to ensure we collectively improve joint working in the Council for the benefit of the city and citizens.

Catherine Zeta-Jones

On Wednesday I attended the Ceremonial Council to grant the freedom of the City to our Swansea film celebrity and Academy Award winner Catherine Zeta-Jones CBE. 

Catherine has done a huge amount of charity work in Swansea and across the globe including devoting time for the benefit of children and is a worthy recipient of the city’s honour.

Catherine was accompanied by her husband, Michael Douglas, and her son Dylan. 

Catherine spoke eloquently and nostalgically about the city and shared her desire to produce a film, preferably here in the city.  I was surprised and I must admit a little embarrassed to learn that Catherine was only the second woman to be awarded the Freedom of the City.  As you may have noticed a celebratory event was held later that day in the Brangwyn Hall.  The world’s media were in attendance on the day so this did a lot to raise the profile of the city as a cultural capital.  The logistics were handled by our outstanding Corporate Communications and Marketing Team who made everything run like clockwork so thanks to all of them.

The event was part of our Swansea 50 celebrations which also saw the launch of our search to find the city’s greatest icon. Please cast your vote.  Thank you to the Lord Mayor’s office, and especially Joanne Jones, for organising two freedom ceremonies this week – tomorrow the 157 (Welsh) Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corp get the honour.

Staff survey

All Heads of Service have now produced action plans which they should have shared with staff. We’ve run a staff survey for the past five years and responses from staff have consistently been around 25%. Leadership Team recently discussed how to improve this rate. Heads of Service were very vocal in their views which demonstrated the importance they place on this piece of work. Details of solutions are still to be agree but I’ll keep you posted.

Thank you and well done

Many thanks to Mark Gosney and all those who helped encourage nominations for this year’s High 5 Awards. Almost 100 were received and I’m now looking forward to the judging process over the summer ahead of the brilliant awards night in September.

Following the success of the Stereophonics gig a couple of weeks ago, staff from Special Events will be working again at Singleton Park this weekend, supporting Pete Tong on Saturday and Jess Glynne on Sunday. These are major events that continue to raise our city’s profile well beyond our borders and I’m grateful for the efforts of those involved.

I’ll be on leave for the next two weeks so my next blog will be on August 9.

This week started with a bang when I was with the Leader at the site of the new arena to meet Alun Cairns, Secretary of State for Wales and Ken Skates, Welsh Government economy minister.   They announced the approval of the first two City Deal projects; Swansea Waterfront and Yr Egin in Carmarthen.  They then met the regional leaders and chief executives to discuss the next steps for the regional economy.  It’s been a long and winding road to get to this point but it’s a real achievement for our economic development team who’ve worked diligently to get us over the line.  It wouldn’t have happened without strong political leadership and the determination of the Leader, Rob Stewart. I hope things can move faster in the UK and Welsh Governments now that we’ve reached this milestone.  Thanks to all involved.

The Leader and I then attended the ERW Joint Committee in Carmarthen where I was reappointed as Lead Chief Executive for the region.  I’m very pleased about this but sad to see the departure of Geraint Rees, the interim Managing Director for ERW.  He and I have worked very closely to reform the organisation and he’s done a great job.

On our return to Swansea we ran through the presentation to the Skyline board which Chris Peters-Bond in our Communications team had excellently pulled together.  This included messages of support from Alun Wyn Jones, Alun Cairns and Ken Skates. It was just as well that we’d prepared early as the Skype call from New Zealand came at 10.30pm on Monday evening, 48 hours earlier than expected!  The Leader and I gave the presentation and answered a number of questions from the Skyline board in a gruelling 90 minutes.  I got to bed at 1am in a state of shock.  Phil Holmes, Huw Mowbray and the team couldn’t have done much more in terms of feeding information and evidence to us, so thanks to all of them for their contributions. The Skyline board will probably make the final decision on whether to proceed next week and I hope it’ll be a positive one for the city and the region.

Boundary Review

On Tuesday we met the Boundary Commission to discuss the changes from the review of electoral arrangements in Wales.  In short the recommendation will be to increase the number of Swansea councillors from 72 to 74 along with amendments to the pattern of wards to balance the number of electors in each area, whilst attempting to maintain recognised community boundaries.  We’ll be preparing a report to Council prior to October, when the consultation period ends. 

Joint working

On Wednesday CMT and Cabinet met to discuss how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our joint working and to progress thinking on the forthcoming regionalisation debate. I’ll return to the relationship between councillors and officers in my next blog as it’s very important.  Research shows the best performing and most resilient councils are those where there’s a strong member/officer team with clarity over roles and where mutual respect is the norm.  The Leader and I both believe this to be true and will be working with officers and councillors to build on the already strong relationship we have.

At Cabinet on Thursday the final capital and revenue outturns were reported which reflect yet another challenging year of continued austerity.  It was an extensive agenda which included the future design of Wind St and the Play Sufficiency Assessment and my thanks to the staff who prepared all of the comprehensive and important reports that were approved. 

Well done and thanks

Thank you to Martin Bignall and his team for their work on dealing with Ash dieback which is affecting hundreds of trees in Swansea and millions across the UK. They’ve been working on our plan and they’ve been praised by the Woodland Trust. It’s also pleasing other councils are asking our comms team for tips on how to devise a successful communications plan on this difficult issue.

It was great to see Charlie Clenton in our transport projects team revisiting his old school, Ynystawe Primary, having helped to design the new cycle link in the area. And thanks to Ben George and David Hughes for their work in securing the grant and designing the route.

Well done to Tracey Nicholls, Alun Thomas and colleagues for overseeing the removal of the historic Bascule Bridge at Landore. The 110-year-old structure had to be painstakingly removed so that to can be restored and returned as part of the Hafod Copperworks Regeneration.

Congratulations to all our teams involved in staging last weekend’s Stereophonics gig, especially special events, highways and cleansing. It was a brilliant success and is further proof of our ability to host big events.

What a strange week!  A Conservative Party leadership candidate reopens the prospect of UK Government supporting the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon and the Labour Party Leader advocates a second Brexit referendum.  Politics has got a lot more interesting lately and both these issues could be significant for our city and the latter would be very significant for our elections team.

Needless to say we’ll pick up on the lagoon comments as we already have strong support at Welsh Government level for the project.  The coming weeks will see further discussions to unblock this initiative with some high-level meetings already in the diary.  

The Leader and I are preparing for a Skype presentation to the board of Skyline in New Zealand.  This will be an important pitch as we try to attract the first scheme of its kind to Europe with support from the Welsh Government and local rugby legend Alun Wyn Jones who’s continued to give his backing and time to the scheme.  Fingers crossed and I’ll report back on progress.

I walk a lot in the city and surrounding areas and I can see there’s a huge amount of regeneration activity under way. It’s keeping many staff busy so hats off to them for their hard work.  I understand next Monday will be another exciting day for us but I’ll say more about that next week.

But buildings in themselves are only part of the story.   Developing the skills and talent to generate economic activity and innovation is critical. So I was pleased once again to receive positive inspection reports from a number of schools.  I’m determined to make a personal contribution to the education and skills agenda and I hope that my appointment as lead Chief Executive for our school improvement consortium, ERW, will be renewed by the joint committee next week.

Yesterday was the Grand Final of the Primary Schools Enterprise Challenge 2019.  What a great event this was with hundreds of young entrepreneurs getting awards for putting their ideas into practice.  I hope this great project continues and thanks to all the teachers and staff who run it and also to those who take part. 

I then travelled to meet Peter Owen, headteacher at Townhill Primary School.  I’d visited Peter in Casllwchwr 18 months ago so it was good to catch up with him again.  The highlight as usual was meeting the children who’d recently been learning about what life was like at the school in 1969 as part of our city’s 50^th birthday celebrations.  Much has changed since I was last at this school with some wonderful outdoor areas created in the courtyards.   Thanks to Peter, his staff and the children for making me feel welcome.

Phones

Some staff, especially in the Guildhall, are having problems with our phone network. As you’ll know, we’re replacing our old system with new and we’re almost there. My thanks to the team who’ve been working so hard to migrate all staff to the new system whilst also trying to resolve the latest issues.

Thanks

I mentioned the Airshow last week but it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute once again to the staff who work so hard to deliver this event.  The feedback has been incredible and the extension into the evening was very popular.  The organisation behind it was seamless and it demonstrated to me what exemplary ‘place-making’ looks like.  I’m conscious of the environmental issues and I hope we can explore ways to compensate for them.  Everyone who spoke to me thought it was the best event ever staged in Wales, both in the day and the evening.  The acid test for me was when a taxi driver told me that his takings were down because of the traffic delays but he didn’t mind as everyone he picked up was in a good mood and he wouldn’t want to see it stop!  Overall the highways were incredibly well managed, the clean-up operation has been rapid and the logistics of the event were spot on.

Building Services has just appointed its 200th apprentice after 16 consecutive years of recruitment campaigns, and this will shortly pass 210 by the end of the recruitment drive.  Thanks to all involved and I hope we can continue to focus the project on improving the future of our looked after children.

Dance Days

This weekend sees the return of one of my other favourite events, Dance Days, sparked by the hard work of Councillor Sybil Crouch and the Taliesin team back in 2005/6.

The events take place at Castle Square, the National Waterfront Museum, and around Swansea marina this weekend. I’ll be there before heading off to watch the Stereophonics in Singleton Park on Saturday evening.  What a City of Culture we are – crown or no crown.

This week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Swansea becoming a City.  It has been a very busy week of events, from street parties to a royal visit.  Thanks to all who have taken part in or supported these events which do much to raise the City profile in the build up to 15 December, the day Swansea formally received its letters patent from the Queen.

On Wednesday I attended the visit of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall – back in Swansea for the occasion.  The weather was perfect and the tide was high across our wonderful bay so when the Prince asked me how I was coping with the job through hard times and austerity I told him that I could be doing it in a worse place, which generated a royal chuckle. 

A huge number of people turned up to meet the royal couple including children from St Helens, Brynmill, Christchurch and Oakleigh House schools.  The visit culminated in the signing of a commemorative charter, the unveiling of plaques to mark the event, musical performances and the cutting of the 50^th birthday cake.

Victoria Park looked fantastic and this is due to the hard works of the staff in the Parks team and my thanks go to them for their efforts.  Thanks also to our teams in communications and marketing and special events for handling the logistics so well.  A special mention to Joanne Jones and David Price-Deer for the huge amount of work they did in planning the visit.

Next up for our Swansea 50 celebrations is the launch next week of our search to find Swansea’s greatest icon – look out for details.

Regional working

On Wednesday I also attended the executive board for the West Glamorgan health and social care partnership.  Much has changed over the past few months as we work with colleagues in Neath Port Talbot and the NHS on the regional transformation of these vital services.  We continue to make progress in building a strong relationship with the NHS and the renewed focus on housing is very welcome.

Given the recent noises coming out of the Welsh Government I am convinced that there are some real opportunities to accelerate and improve our regional working partnerships on social care, school improvement and economic development and I will be discussing these with officers and members over the next few weeks.  One of the biggest obstacles is travelling across a massive geographical area and I am sure that in the digital age there must be ways in which we can use technology rather than petrol.

I think it is fair to say that local government in Wales has been more vociferous about what it doesn’t want in relation to reform and regionalisation thank what it does.  It would be more constructive to offer a proposition to the Welsh Government and I hope that following discussions with councillors we can open a dialogue with our neighbouring councils. 

Airshow

As you are no doubt aware this weekend sees the return of the Wales Airshow, bigger and better than ever.  I shall be joining the throngs on the beach at what is one of the most popular events in the national calendar.  The logistics are mind boggling so thanks to all the staff who are working to make this a fun-filled and safe event for everyone.  I know that the road closures, which start on Oystermouth Road westbound from noon today, can be frustrating for many residents but it is a small price to pay when so many people enjoy the weekend.

Thank you

Thank you to all the staff who’ve been working for quite some time on the process for closing two of our small schools – Craigcefenparc and Felindre. The decision to take this step is never easy but we did so for the right reasons. But the process to get to that stage involves many meetings with governors, teachers, community events, inter departmental discussions and a huge amount of research and analysis of facts and figures.

We deal with hundreds of cyber attacks on our ICT systems daily and the importance of having highly qualified technical staff to help defend ourselves against attacks by criminals is critical. That’s why it’s very pleasing to hear we have been awarded the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials Plus status. At the same time we’ve been awarded “Silver” status for excellence in Information Governance.

It’s also good to see our first all-council webinar on Microsoft Teams went well. We now have access to Office 365 and its apps which aim to give us the tools we need to do your job as easily and efficiently as possible.  Teams is a great one for communicating and working together. To help you make the most of Teams and the other apps on offer check out the Staffnet guides – and a video of the webinar if you missed it live – at https://www.swansea.gov.uk/staffnet/teams Thank you Matt Knott and others in the team for all their efforts on this.

Awards reminder

Don’t forget our High 5 nominations are now open. You can nominate anyone up to 25 years old so please have a think if you know any young person who deserves an award. Details here.