Archives for February 2021

It’s great to see some of our schools return this week as we begin to take their first steps of recovery from the on-going pandemic.

It comes as the number of Covid cases in Swansea has fallen to 53 per 100,000 which is a massive fall from more than 700 per 100,000 a few months ago.

This week pupils in the Foundation Phase (aged 3 to 7) went back into class. Some had all their pupils in this age group back from Wednesday, others are using a phased approach, but by Monday all children in the Foundation Phase should be in school.

Initial indications show it’s gone very well so far and some schools are reporting high and even 100% attendance rates.

Schools and teachers, supported by our officers across the council, have done a great job in preparing by updating risk assessments and making sure schools are as Covid-safe as possible.

All schools should this week have lateral flow testing kits from the Welsh Government so from next week teachers can be tested twice a week. There are bound to be concerns and teething issues but our officers have tried to make the reporting of results as simple as possible and improved the system for reporting positive cases among pupils and staff.

It should also be remembered that schools have not been closed during lockdown – they‘ve been providing on-site learning for the children of critical workers and our most vulnerable children.

Teachers have also been providing online learning and the feedback from parents and students has been largely very positive. This of course can’t replace face to face teaching in schools and the Welsh Government has indicated that all primary school pupils and some secondary pupils could start returning from March 15.

I want to thank everyone involved in our schools and other services that have worked together to make this possible. It really has been an outstanding effort.

Next week we’ll start recruiting our new Head of Achievement and Partnership for Education which was Helen Morgan-Rees’s former role before she was recently appointed our Director of Education.

Call to action

The positive news that Covid cases are falling and vaccinations are speeding along is giving us a bit of an election headache.

There are elections for the Senedd, Police and Crime Commissioner, our Castle By-Election and a Mumbles Community Council By-Election on May 6. It’s always a massive operation for us but this year it’s going to be even more complex with the need to ensure we have safe environments for voters, staff, candidates and party officials.

Every election our staff work wonders by taking on roles in polling stations, counts etc, but this year we’re going to need your help more than ever.

We’re setting up approximately 145 polling stations and will need three staff in many of them. We’ll also have two count venues at the Brangwyn Hall and LC. Counts are expected to take place on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We’re taking extra measures to make all of these venues safe for everyone working there and casting votes etc. And it goes without saying staff safety and welfare will be our priority.

It’s a particular headache for me as I’m now the Regional Returning Officer for South West Wales. We’ll be having weekly meetings with the Welsh Government and Electoral Commission, and the support from our elections team has been fantastic

But to make this work we need more staff than ever to come forward. Our election team are finalising their plans and they’ll be advertising opportunities for staff in the coming weeks.

My appeal to everyone is if you can help please come forward when you see the adverts on Staffnet and in future blogs.

We’ve already had 32,000 people wanting to vote by post. If you want to apply for a PV and you live in Swansea area, please contact elections@swansea.gov.uk.

Another great effort

Last weekend our highways teams were out yet again in atrocious weather dealing with floods and rising river levels around the city, including places like Ynystawe and Clydach. My thanks to the team for their efforts.

The Chief Executive is on leave this week. The blog will return as usual on February 26.

The vaccination programme continues to roll-out and we’ve now given the jab to more than 80,000 people in the region.

It comes as Wales is the first of the UK nations to vaccinate 20% of its population and the infection rate for Swansea is now below 70 per 100,000 people. That’s the lowest it’s been for a number of months and it’s continuing to go down. However, now is not the time to get complacent because the emerging variants continue to worry health officials so we all need to continue taking steps to avoid gathering and spreading the virus.  But it’s worth acknowledging the work put in to set up vaccine centres, distribute the vaccines and organise appointments at great pace and efficiency. It’s been an incredible effort and shows joint-working between ourselves, Neath Port Talbot and the health board at its best. Thank you to everyone involved.

Collaboration has been the theme of my week so far. The Regional Partnership Board met on Monday to discuss the management of health and care during the pandemic.  The ERW joint committee met on Tuesday to discuss the future collaboration proposals and the work done during the pandemic to support schools and learners remotely.  And yesterday the City Deal joint committee met to review progress on the regional economic development projects.  

Clearly, there’s a good deal of collaboration taking place but these are separate and unconnected partnerships all operating currently on different regional footprints.  The Welsh Government legislation on corporate joint committees aims to take this collaborative activity to the next level, but this will require all councils to agree on a common footprint, hopefully adopting the four council City Deal partnership as the template. I think we’ll be missing a trick if we fail to work together to achieve it.  It will not be through want of effort from our officers and councillors and I’d like to thank our senior teams for their leadership and ambition.  The next few weeks will be critical in securing agreement.

Still on the topic of regional working, I chaired a session in my role as Regional Returning Officer for elections with the returning officers and their teams from NPT and Bridgend.  The Welsh Government is currently planning to press ahead with the Senedd elections on 6^th May along with the polls for the police and crime commissioners and local by-elections, where required.  In the current circumstances this presents some real challenges in running the poll and the election count in line with the necessary restrictions for Covid-19.  Our main priority will be the safety and well-being of the public and staff involved in the election process. Huw Evans and Alison O’Hara in our elections team are working closely with Craig Gimblett and his health and safety team to ensure this happens.  Unfortunately, a number of our usual polling stations will be unavailable because of the impacts of the pandemic and we’re considering options and alternatives. Over the coming weeks we’ll finalise the arrangements in line with national guidelines so that the democratic process can proceed properly. 

Thank you

Cabinet will next week discuss our budget proposals so thank you to everyone who responded to the consultation. But in this oddest of years, we’ve been informed there may be more funding available at this late stage with both the UK and Welsh Government making announcements in early March. As you can imagine, we’re pressing our case for more money to help with our recovery plan. It’s been another great effort from our Finance team to sort the latest grants to businesses this week. Many of our businesses are in dire straits and I’m grateful to the team for providing this lifeline as quickly as possible. And thanks to our education and school staff for all their work in helping to prepare schools to re-open for our youngest pupils from February 22. The Monday and Tuesday will be used by schools as planning days with some pupils returning from the Wednesday and all Foundation Phase year groups starting to return by Friday 26 February.

Another busy week has whistled past, much like the ones before it, but there were a few highlights over the last seven days.

The vaccination programme hit some more important milestones as more than 60,000 residents in our health board area have now been vaccinated.  The programme remains on course to meet its targets and this is hugely encouraging news.

It was great to receive a letter this week from the Welsh Government and NHS Wales thanking us for our efforts with Test, Trace, Protect. It said, “Every day you go beyond the core task of tracing contacts to provide support for those affected. We’ve seen so many examples of individuals and teams going the extra mile to deliver a quality service which reflects the strength of partnership working amongst all the teams and services involved.”  I know the amazing efforts our staff put in and I’m grateful for everything you do.

Staying with the virus, we’re expecting an announcement today that  primary school pupils aged three to seven will be returning to classes after the February half term. All other pupils will remain at home. I know some staff and parents will have concerns, but we’ll be working with unions and supporting schools to ensure pupils, staff and parents are reassured about safety during the return. 

This week Council appointed Helen Morgan Rees as our permanent Director of Education after a thorough and detailed assessment process.  I was delighted with her appointment as Helen has been instrumental in helping me with some of the regional challenges in school improvement and I look forward to her working with our headteachers to make sure that future regional arrangements meet the needs of our schools.  Many thanks to the Youth Panel for their input and to Simon Davies and Kerina Hanson, the headteachers who worked with us on the assessment process.

Regional working is set to be accelerated as the Local Government & Elections Act comes into force, with a new blueprint for collaboration via Corporate Joint Committees.  We’ll be developing our thinking further on this as the guidance from Welsh Government becomes available.  It remains to be seen whether our appetite for collaborative working is shared by our regional partner councils, but collaboration is not something you can do on your own.  The Leader and I will be holding further discussions next week in a hope to get some of the foundations laid and I’ll update you on progress over the coming weeks.

On Wednesday our education consortium, ERW, met the Minister for Education to update her on progress made in supporting learning during the pandemic.  I’m aware of some really excellent work being done by many of our schools here in Swansea in extremely challenging circumstances. Blended learning is no substitute for real time teaching in person but the enthusiasm and innovation shown by our school staff is amazing.  I have no doubt that there’ll be a legacy of issues for us to deal with in future and I think concerted effort and significant funding is likely to be required to recover the lost ground.  The Minister was reassured by the discussion but I suspect she shares the same concerns over the scale of the recovery once the dust settles.

On the subject of broader collaboration, I met once again with Newport and Cardiff chief executives on the impacts of retail closures.  You may have seen the purchase of Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge by Asos was followed by a statement on store closures and a switch to online trading for these well-known brands.  Both Topshop and Miss Selfridge have been in decline in recent years and unfortunately 2,500 jobs are now at risk across the UK as a result of store closures.  On the back of the Debenhams announcement the pace of change in the retail sector is accelerating faster than our capacity to remodel our shopping centres.  The whole of the South Wales economy depends on the economic health of the cities so the consequences will be far-reaching unless we address them.  The situation is the same in Cardiff and Newport and so we’ll be making further representations next week to the Welsh Government for help in our plans to transform our city centres to adapt to the Brave New World.  

Great work

Whilst the budget focus to date has been on our revenue proposals, we’ll soon be taking our capital spending plans to Cabinet. Our capital programme is currently the largest Swansea has ever had and the continued pace of investment remains unabated for the city, the wider area and particularly housing and schools. Thanks to Jayne James and the capital and treasury management teams for their excellent work in managing and funding the Council’s substantial capital aspirations and enabling delivery.

Sad news

I was saddened to hear of the recent death of the mother of our Lord Mayor, Thelma Child. And also the passing of Tony Mann, the husband of Councillor Irene Mann.  Our best wishes and condolences go to both these hard-working and dedicated councillors.