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.
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