Archives for September 2020

We’re once again heading towards choppy waters as the number of Covid cases locally and nationally increase at a worrying rate.

Swansea has now passed the significant threshold of 50 cases per 100,000. As a result we are in discussions with the Welsh Government over the local measures we now need to put in place.

I expect further discussions with the Welsh Government today that will mean further restrictions coming into force shortly. This will bring fresh challenges for all of us, both in work and our personal lives. We’re already making arrangements to support staff, businesses and our communities.

In the meantime, it’s vital that all of us abide by the current restrictions and any new measures introduced following these discussions.

At the moment, the message from the Government is clear.  If we can work from home we should do so and everyone should limit their interaction with others and travel in line with the guidance.  I know this will be difficult for many but it’s essential we observe the rules and the advice.

I’m so grateful to the way our staff have adapted during the pandemic, often changing roles, working from home and making personal sacrifices. We’re going to need that commitment from you again now and during the autumn and winter months, at the very least. We’ve also just re-mobilised those staff who underwent contact tracing training during the first wave to deal with the current increase in cases. We need them in these roles while we train externally-recruited tracers. I’m grateful to these staff and managers for their understanding and flexibility.

Since the outbreak and initial restrictions earlier this year, we’ve ensured that all staff have been suitably protected from the risk of transmission through appropriate PPE, changes to working practises and where possible working from home to protect the safety of staff and our families. But it’s also vitally important that we as council employees personally and fully adhere to the rules which Welsh Government have put in place to protect each other and our families and friends.  Unfortunately, we’ve experienced incidents of staff not complying with the rules, including staff either attending work with Covid symptoms or meeting up outside work for social gatherings inside premises. In situations like this, formal action will be taken and in cases where it is determined that such actions have placed others at risk, this could mean that a member of staff’s employment will be in jeopardy. I really hope we never reach that point, so please take all steps to avoid breaking the restrictions both during and outside working hours.

Great work

Our Property Services team has been working hard to bring in partner organisations to the Civic Centre. This month we welcomed three new tenants to the building – the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), Independent Monitoring Authority (IMA) and The Courts’ Service who are now successfully running one of their Nightingale Courts. It means we can forge excellent, collaborative working relations with other Government departments, generate income and help bring around 100 new jobs to Swansea. A big thanks to Geoff Bacon and his team, especially Becky Jones, Nerys Williams, Alex O’Brien and Tom Rees.

Farewell

This week we say farewell to our outgoing Head of Child & Family Services, Julie Thomas, after more than a decade of service here. It’s one of the toughest jobs in any local authority and Julie has helped develop the service into one which is admired and respected across Wales and the UK.  We wish her a long and happy retirement as we welcome out new Head of Service, Julie Davies, to the role of Head of Service. 

I mentioned in last week’s blog that there were signs the second coronavirus wave had started.  With two Welsh councils now in lockdown the contact tracing teams, including our own, face an increasing workload.  The TTP strategy will however struggle until the problems with the national testing arrangements are resolved.  It’s a major concern that the arrangements made by the UK Government have failed to provide the necessary capacity and timely turn-round of tests.  I’ve been pressing for a bespoke Welsh system to be developed and a number of other chief executives in Wales feel the same way. 

During the past week there have been a number of outbreaks and specific cases identified and this has meant that, in line with national guidance, the entire “bubble” of contacts also need to self-isolate.  This will have unfortunate consequences and it will delay the process of returning to schools and workplaces. Four of our schools are currently affected, but we should anticipate this number to increase. Whilst Swansea has a relatively low number of cases compared to many others, our latest figures as of yesterday show there have been 92 cases since September 1 and worrying going in the wrong direction. It’s vital we all take steps such as social distancing and washing our hands to stem the tide. My thanks to all our TTP staff and those working on the front-line trying to protect the public.

Regeneration

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On Monday I visited the arena site to see the progress made on construction.  It’s a really impressive structure and the contractors continue to work at pace to meet the challenging deadlines.  Rapid progress is also being made on the residential block opposite.  Once again our staff are doing an excellent job so my thanks to them all for their hard work and commitment.

The rate of progress was also helpful evidence of the growing confidence in the city when the Leader and I, along with Councillors Andrea Lewis and Robert Francis Davies joined Huw Mowbray in launching the next phase of regeneration sites on the Estates Gazette podcast which was broadcast on Tuesday. We hope this will generate further interest from developers in the city in the coming months.

And well done to all officers involved in bringing the first four huge steel panels of a new bridge to Swansea this week. It was a remarkable operation brilliantly carried out. The panels will form the span of the landmark gold-coloured bridge that – from next year – will cross Oystermouth Road, linking the new arena and parkland to the scheme’s north side.

Performance

Yesterday the Cabinet considered the corporate plan performance results for 2019/20.  Overall 55% of indicators met their targets and 62% showed improvement or stayed the same compared to 2018/19.  The report also contains the provisional outturn for 2019/20 of the Council’s performance against national Public Accountability Measures (PAMs). The results show that 67% of PAMs met their targets and 50% of comparable PAMs improved or stayed the same compared to 2018/19. Performance is strong in a number of areas and a number are among the best in Wales, according to the last available national data. The last available national data, for example, shows that our performance determining planning applications on time continues to exceed targets and is among the best in Wales. Thanks to all staff for their continued hard work in delivering essential public services and thanks to Richard Rowlands and his team for their comprehensive report.

Education

You may have heard that our Director of Education is currently on sick leave and our best wishes go to Nick for a speedy recovery.  Last week Council appointed Helen Morgan Rees as the interim Director of Education and I look forward to working with her on supporting schools locally and introducing new regional school improvement services by April next year.  Helen has a wealth of experience and I am grateful to her for stepping in at this particularly challenging time.

DIY SoS

My thanks to all the teams involved in supporting the BBC DIY SoS Big Build project at Caswell Bay. When completed Caswell will be home to a state of the art adaptive surfing facility for people with disabilities. There’s a huge amount of work we have to do away from the cameras to make sure this well-deserved project gets off the ground and it’s the second time Nick Knowles and his team has been to Swansea for a project like this. You can see from the video just how grateful he is for the support we’re giving.

The last six months have been a major challenge for us all, professionally and personally.  We’ve all adjusted our working and living patterns to help to restrict the spread of the coronavirus and this has clearly had a significant impact in containing it.

For many months scientists have been predicting a second wave of the pandemic and developments over the past couple of weeks both globally and locally suggest that we may well be heading towards this scenario.  Our Test Trace & Protect team have been very busy in the past week as they contact trace a growing number of people following a series of outbreaks.

The latest Welsh Government information shows the virus is continuing to spread in communities across the country with a lockdown imposed in Caerphilly that will go on until at least the end of the month. In Swansea and Neath Port Talbot evidence from rigorous contact tracing shows people are ignoring social distancing rules as well as meeting people outside their extended household group when they should not.

It’s essential we observe the guidelines and rules which are likely to be strengthened in the coming days and weeks. Today the First Minister Mark Drakeford has confirmed that from Monday we must all wear masks in shops and other indoor public spaces. Indoor meetings of more than six from an extended household will be illegal from Monday. It will mean that, from Monday, a new limit of six people will be introduced on the number of people who can meet indoors at any one time. All six must belong to the same extended household group. This will bring us into line with similar measures being introduced in Scotland and England.

As the situation continues to develop, we’re working with colleagues in Neath Port Talbot Council and the Swansea Bay University Health Board to prepare for the second wave and this may mean adding personnel to our TTP team and redirecting staff to administrative functions to support this.

Linked to this, CMT discussed the positive results that came out of the recent staff survey on working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.  The next steps will be to brief Members and unions on the proposal for future working arrangements for those staff where their role enables them to work from home. These proposals will ensure that staff are supported to meet business needs and continue to be productive during and beyond the pandemic.

Congratulations and thanks

Congratulations to Lucy Moore, People Team Manager in Legal, who’s been shortlisted for Solicitor of the Year – In House in the Law Society Excellence Awards 2020. Lucy is the only solicitor from a local authority in the UK to be shortlisted in what are the UK’s top awards for lawyers. It’s a significant achievement and I wish her well when the awards are announced next month.

You may remember the floods that engulfed some streets in Swansea during Storm Francis a couple of weeks ago with winds reaching 70mph in some places. In the last 12 months there’ve been three other storms that caused flooding and disruption in our area, a spate of events that some in the highways team say they’ve not seen in 35 years of experience. Every time the storms have hit, our highways and parks teams have been out in atrocious weather to fix the problems, help residents and get roads re-opened. I want to say thank you to them for their continuing effort and commitment to keeping our communities safe.

This week we finalised the draft recovery plan which sets out how we’ll deal with the economic and social recovery from the pandemic. It also details our strategy for medium-term financial planning and transforming our organisation for the next five years, superseding Sustainable Swansea as our overarching plan. So it’s fair to say it’ll affect all our staff and services in the coming years.

It will be presented for formal consideration by Cabinet in the coming weeks. I’ll be discussing with CMT colleagues how we communicate this to staff, given the current unusual working conditions.  Conventionally, we would have organised a series of roadshows for staff but that’ll prove challenging at the moment.

The financial outlook remains uncertain and potentially precarious, but to date we’ve secured significant funding from the Welsh Government to cover most of the additional costs and lost income which have resulted from the Covid-19 response.  We will once again be planning for the worst whilst hoping for the best, but it’s vitally important the Council takes a leading role in helping our citizens, communities and businesses recover and move forward in the coming months.

Back to school

Thanks to all the teachers and staff who are supporting the phased return to school this week and next.  The feedback to date has been encouraging and we must continue to support colleagues as they try to get our education service fully operational again.  I don’t underestimate the challenges this brings.

Despite the many challenges of the pandemic, the next phase of our 21^st Century Schools QEd programme has progressed at a remarkable pace. After many years of work, village green applications and the last five months of the construction phase being under Covid restrictions, the new Gorseinon Primary School will open to pupils on Monday. This is a remarkable achievement and thanks to the hard work of the project team, and especially Nicola Jones in Education, Nigel Hawkins in Corporate Buildings and our main contractor Andrew Scott Ltd. And three other major projects have started on site in the past few months at Bishopston Comprehensive, YG Gwyr and YGG Tan y lan. Again all credit to the project teams including Education, CBS and our external contractors.

Regional digital strategy

I had a useful discussion with the lead officer for the City Deal regional digital strategy this week.  The delivery of a resilient and powerful digital infrastructure will be critical in realising economic ambitions and maximising the impact of the Digital Arena and Kingsway schemes.  The way forward looks set to be agreed at the next City Deal Joint Committee in October so I’ll be able to expand on the plans in more detail then.  This will also help in driving forward our organisational transformation as public sector organisations collaborate together to provide long term digital resilience for Swansea and the region.

Well done

Thanks to our Passenger Transport Team who’ve been busy working with local transport operators to increase the level of buses on our roads this week – it follows £1.67million of additional funding the Welsh Government provided to the region. Some of the funding has helped to put more buses on key routes including local colleges and schools.

It goes without saying that staff across the council continue to perform heroics in these challenging times and I’m grateful to every one of you.