Archives for January 2020

Thanks to all the staff who’ve so far attended the roadshows.  It’s important that all staff have their opportunity to ask questions and raise concerns about the Council as a place to work as well as hearing the progress that’s being made on improving our organisation and the city.  Please let us have your comments on the budget through the consultation link.  The final report will be considered and the budget agreed by Council on the March 5. In both of my roadshows this week I repeated my commitment to use all our efforts to avoid compulsory redundancies and I expect senior managers to work hard with staff and trade unions to achieve this.  Thanks to Chris Peters-Bond and Liz Edmonds for organising the roadshows. If you haven’t already come along, please try to make one of the roadshows.

Indoor market

We’ve always known it, but now it’s official – our city’s brilliant indoor market is the best of its kind in the UK. Swansea Indoor Market has been named Britain’s best Large Indoor Market for 2020 by the National Association of British Market Authorities, the leading authority on the UK markets sector.

It’s the second time in five years that we’ve landed this sought-after title. Judges said its rich history, central location and our plans for its future were among the compelling reasons why the market deserved the accolade. I shop there regularly and I’m continually impressed by the unfailing warmth of the welcome from knowledgeable traders, the quality and breadth of what’s on offer and the fantastic atmosphere.

I want to thank Cabinet Member Robert Francis-Davies, City Centre Manager Lisa Wells, Sarah Lawton, Rhiannon Steel and John Burns for their work to secure this latest honour. Credit also to the traders who make the market what it is and to all the customers who show their support for the jewel in the city centre’s crown every day.

An important appointment

This week the City Deal Joint Committee met to discuss a range of items.  It was my first opportunity to meet the newly-appointed Programme Director for the City Deal, Dr Jonathan Burnes.  Jonathan has held a number of senior positions at the university in the last 12 years. These include Director of Information, Services and Systems; Digital Strategy Development Manager; and Associate Director of Planning and Strategic Projects.  As the City Deal’s Programme Director he’ll establish and lead a new Programme Management Office to co-ordinate a portfolio of major projects across the Swansea Bay City Region, which is made up of Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire and Swansea.  Jonathan is a local, educated at Gowerton Comprehensive School and is passionate about the area so I’m optimistic that progress will be accelerated even more quickly. This is an important appointment which ensures that the findings of the governance review by the UK and Welsh governments are now fully addressed.  The Joint Committee also agreed its implementation plan for the City Deal which can be found here if you are interested

Crowdfunding

The council has teamed up with Spacehive to launch its community crowdfunding platform. Several projects have already been submitted for financial support from the £75k available. Take a look at the projects and lend your support if you can. If you know any community groups who are looking to get an idea off the ground, point them to the Spacehive/Swansea site via this link

Staff departures

Two very experienced and long-standing officers are retiring from Cultural Services, having gained almost 86 years of service between them.  Nigel Lehane started with the city council in 1980 as a Temporary Sand Boy in Group B of the then Recreation Department.  Nigel retires after almost 40 years as the Foreshore Supervisor in the Leisure Operations Team. Dave Osborne retires having served almost 46 years. Dave started in 1974 with the Borough of Afan as a swimming instructor, progressing to the post of Leisure Centre Manager at Penyrheol and to his current post of Leisure Operations Manager. We wish them both a happy retirement.

Sybil

Yesterday I joined a huge number of people to celebrate the life of Councillor and former Lady Mayoress Sybil Crouch.  It was, as planned and requested, a colourful affair and a fitting tribute.  Not being renowned for sartorial flamboyance I simply wore the only tie Sybil ever told me she liked in all the years we worked together.  Our thoughts and best wishes go to her friends and family.

Corporate Management Team this week discussed the third quarter budget monitoring results and I’m pleased to say that thanks to your efforts we appear to be heading for break-even by the end of the year.  I know the current spending restrictions are frustrating for many but the impact has been impressive.  Thanks to all staff who’ve worked to control spend at a time when service demands and pressures are higher than ever.  We are also performing very well on the capital programme with a number of complex major projects delivering on time and to budget.  Having done a lot of this work during my career, I know how difficult it is to keep major projects on track and the work on housing, schools and regeneration are making a huge impact on the city. The budget roadshows have now started and I hope to see many of you at the ones I’ll be leading next week. 

More Homes

When I started working in Housing 34 years ago I was convinced that building council houses had ended as Government policy shifted towards housing associations as the sole deliverer of new social housing.  This came as a major disappointment to me as I had been trained in housing finance and construction and was looking forward to helping to develop new council housing in Swansea.  How times change. Yesterday Cabinet agreed a report on the More Homes project which sets the ambitious target of building 1,000 new council homes and a further 4,000 affordable RSL homes by 2031.  This is great news for the city and results from the hard work done by Carol Morgan and her team in Housing on the More Homes project.  I’m hoping to visit the current development sites in the next couple of weeks to see the work in progress.

It’s great to see the Evening Post report our commitment to addressing climate change. We’ve got the biggest electric vehicle fleet of any council in Wales, we’re planting thousands of trees and the pension fund is divesting from fossil fuels, to name a few examples. We’re also very proud all new council homes will be energy-efficient, plus we’re among the first councils in the UK to retro-fit existing council houses with energy-efficiency aids. This will help us cut our carbon footprint even further and reduce tenants’ bills.

Social Care

On Tuesday I was interviewed by consultants working for Welsh Government on the impact of the Social Care and Well-being Act in Swansea.  Whilst many of the aspects of the legislation were already being undertaken here in Swansea I shared the view that the Act helped sharpen the focus on how we interact with our citizens and the importance of prevention in health and social care.  Thanks to our teams in social services I was able to give a good account of how Swansea has responded to the legislation both in Child and Family Services and Adult Services.  The review will be completed later this year and hopefully some of the excellent social work practice we have here in Swansea will be reflected in it.

Learning

Today is the UN’s International Day of Education and as one of just four cities in the UK and the only one in Wales to be a member of the UNESCO Global Network on Learning Cities they’ll be sharing a short video on the work we’re doing in Swansea.

Sad news

I was saddened to hear that Councillor and former Lady Mayoress Sybil Crouch had passed away after a long illness.  I worked very closely with Sybil when she was a cabinet member but also in her role heading up the Taliesin.  Sybil worked tirelessly on behalf of her constituents and to promote the importance of culture and sustainability in the city and beyond.  Thanks to Sybil’s drive and determination this council became the exemplar authority in Wales for sustainable development, embedding the principles long before others.   Her support over the years has been invaluable to me and I’ll be joining friends and colleagues at St Mary’s church next week to celebrate her life and her achievements.

I was also saddened to hear that two former councillors, John Bushell and Derek James, had passed away. John represented Fairwood ward for many years and was committed to helping us to address the problems of homelessness in the city. I worked with Derek as ward member for Uplands. He was an excellent ward councillor and will be sorely missed.

Our budget proposals are out for consultation and we’ll be starting staff roadshows next week so that you can have your say.

Despite the better than expected funding from Welsh Government, we’re still facing budget pressures next year after almost a decade of austerity. One of the big challenges is minimising the impact on staff and we’re doing everything we can to avoid compulsory redundancies. Unfortunately, there are some posts identified as potentially “at risk”, but we’ll be aiming to avoid any potential compulsory redundancies through redeployment opportunities or ER/VR, wherever possible.  I also expect managers to consider “bumped redundancies” as another way of avoiding compulsory redundancies. I know this is an unsettling time for those staff potentially at risk but, rest assured, as in previous years, we’ll be pulling out all the stops to avoid job losses wherever we can.  I’ve made my expectations on this very clear to the Corporate Management Team and I know they’ll once again do their best to deliver.

The staff roadshows start next Thursday and these will be a chance for you to learn more about the budget proposals and to have your say on the proposals. You can get details of the roadshows here and please come along to one of the sessions.

At the end of November I mentioned in my blog that the Sustainable Swansea programme is due for review.  The original ambitious strategy was agreed by Cabinet in October 2013 and it has formed the foundation for service and financial planning ever since.  It continues to provide the basis for our medium term financial plan but we must now adapt our thinking to reflect some important issues and developments.  This must include planning for continued austerity, adapting to regional working, improving public engagement and continuing digital transformation. Part of this review will include some reflection on what has been achieved by the Sustainable Swansea programme in terms of cultural change, transformation and financial management.  Often this can be incremental. I’d like everyone who wishes to have a say to be involved in setting out our framework for the future and I’ll be discussing this with directors over the next week or so.

Regional Working

Discussions continue with the Welsh Government on future collaboration between councils and in the meantime regional working continues apace.   On Tuesday I met the regional CEOs to discuss progress on the City Deal and the potential to develop further projects on transport and energy. And on Thursday I attended the Regional Partnership Board for health and social care to discuss Transformation Fund Programmes Evaluation, Early Years and Prevention Funding and the Home Dialysis project.  There’s an increasing volume of work being done regionally and I know this is creating extra workload for many officers.  The need for a more consistent and formalised approach on a common footprint is urgent and I hope the discussions we’re having with Welsh Government will deliver this.

Domestic Abuse

CMT is looking at how we can support staff who are victims of domestic abuse and violence. It’s a really important issue that affects many people and we’ll be reviewing existing policies to see how we can strengthen the support we offer.

Thanks

Thank you to all our staff who were out in this week’s storms ensuring our services continued to run and supporting the public. Let’s hope that’s the last of the extreme weather for a while!

Well done to Clint Jacobs in our cleansing team who’s been praised by the public for coming to the aid of a man who collapsed on the street in Uplands. Thankfully, Clint was on hand with others to help the man before an ambulance arrived.

And thanks to all the staff, councillors and charity supporters who joined me at the Lord Mayor’s Charity Quiz last night, raising £529 for the Lord Mayor’s Charity Fund which supports Llys Nini, Crisis and Unity in Diversity.

As we start 2020 it’s worth reflecting on the year gone by.  At a national level it was a year dominated by the political arguments over the departure of the UK from the European Union. 

A year ago I wrote in my blog that if I was writing my Christmas list it would have included three things, and on reflection my requests appear to have been delivered, at least in part;

• Greater clarity on Brexit from the UK Government at the earliest opportunity

We now look likely to leave the European Union on 31 January, although the form of that exit still isn’t clear.  If, and when, the European Parliament also agrees, then the UK will formally leave the EU at the end of January with a withdrawal deal.  There’ll then be a transition period until 31 December 2020.  During this period the UK effectively remains in the EU customs union and single market.  We won’t however be part of the political institutions and we’ll have no members in the European Parliament.

The negotiation of the trade deal is essential to give some continuity over goods and services.   If there’s no agreed trade deal by the end of the year, then the UK faces the prospect of tariffs on exports to the EU as the withdrawal bill rules out any form of extension to the transition period.  I suspect this year’s news will once again be dominated by Brexit for this very reason. 

• A sense of direction from the Welsh Government on the future shape of local government

The Local Government and Elections (Wales) Bill is currently making its way through the Senedd and in fairness it sets out a coherent framework for formalising regional working between councils.  The ball is now squarely in our court to explain how we intend to respond to the proposals through consultation and through driving change.  I think it’s safe to say that a fair amount of my time will be devoted to working on this with our councillors to do what is best for the city and the region.

• Some real evidence that austerity is over, including a fair financial settlement for local government

Shortly before Christmas the Welsh Government advised councils of the likely budget allocations for 2020/21.  The news was better than expected and whilst it doesn’t recover the damage done to councils by austerity in the past decade, it means we’ll be able to protect more jobs and maintain our core services.  We’ll be finalising the budget in the coming weeks and holding roadshows with staff to explain the financial position.

It’s been a busy year for us all.  From a personal perspective the year was made difficult by my four-month absence from work but I was grateful to Jack Straw and to CMT for covering for me while I was off. 

There were many highlights this year for me but if I had to pick three …..

• Firstly Swansea celebrated its 50^th year as a city in style.  From street parties through the Airshow, outdoor fireworks, concerts in the park and the best Xmas parade, we reminded the people of Swansea that they live in a city to be proud of.  None of this would have been possible without your expertise, hard work and commitment.

• Secondly, the pace of change to the city infrastructure gained real momentum.  The formal agreement of terms for the City Deal and the drawing down of cash from the governments meant that we could start on site with Swansea Central Phase 1.  At the same time interest from developers has rocketed and cranes have appeared across the skyline giving a renewed sense of confidence to the city and region.

• Thirdly, the performance of our schools and learners and our investment in the education infrastructure highlighted the strong foundations we’re building for the future of our young people.

So it’s with renewed optimism that I look forward to this year.  In my blog of 13 September I explained to you the objectives that Council has set for me and I’ll do everything I can to achieve these. 

I hope you have all enjoyed the Christmas and New Year holiday and that you too will continue the work to make Swansea the best place it can be. 

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda