Archives for April 2021

Next week’s elections are going to be like no other whether you’re working at a polling station or count or going out to vote.

The pandemic means we’ve had to introduce a series of changes to make it safe and workable for everyone.

Our 132 polling stations will look different with one-way systems, where possible, staff wearing face coverings and screens between them and voters. Those voting should bring their own pen or pencil, although there’ll be supplies on hand. Voters have QR codes on poll cards and our staff will be using iPads to register who comes in, rather than the old way where the poll clerk marked-off the register by pen. This should help to limit the time someone’s in the polling station.

And if all that wasn’t enough to plan for, we have a series of different elections and counts taking place with polls for the Senedd, Police and Crime Commissioner, by-elections in our Castle and Llansamlet wards and two community council by-elections in Mumbles.

There are counts on Friday at the LC for the Senedd Swansea East and Gower constituencies and Llansamlet by-election, and at the Brangwyn for the Senedd Swansea West and Castle by-election and then the PCC count two days later. Similar precautions will be taken at the counts to ensure the safety of staff, candidates and observers.

Thanks to Rhys Harries from our Housing and Public Health service for meeting with us on Wednesday to advise on safety and provide support during the verification and count process.  Even without the pandemic this would have been a huge task, but our elections team and other services supporting them have been outstanding and meticulous in their planning. My thanks to everyone involved. Please remember to vote and encourage others to do the same.

Covid latest

The easing of restrictions means a number of our services and venues will be re-opening next week. Leisure centres, pools and gyms are among those that can re-open and our staff and partners have been busy putting in place new arrangements and safety measures, including limited visitor numbers. To give gym-users and swimmers the earliest possible chance of a return to action, Penlan is set to open at just a minute after midnight this Sunday night/Monday morning.  More news in the coming days and weeks on locations such as our community centres and outdoor and indoor cultural service attractions.

The bank holiday may bring some more problems with large gatherings at the usual hotspots but we’re working closely with police to take the necessary action.

The infection rate is just above 21 per 100,000 which while pleasing is still the second highest in Wales so we just need to keep being sensible.

Management review

The independent senior management review is progressing with the interviews of key people now completed. I expect the report in a couple of weeks and then there’ll be discussions and consultation with those affected. The new structure has to take us through recovery, especially economic, education and social services as well as our transformation programme. And at the same time give us capacity to push ahead with regionalisation.

Good news

Our Building Services team has once again been shortlisted by APSE in the Best Performer for Building Maintenance. This is the ninth year in a row the service has been shortlisted in this category. The work areas include day-to-day maintenance, voids, gas servicing/maintenance and out-of-hours repairs.  In many of the categories Building Services were the top performer in the UK which shows what a fantastic service they consistently provide. Good luck in the final.

Anyone with teenage children or grandchildren will tell you just how hard it can be to engage them in a meaningful way.

But that’s the challenge for us as a council because the voice of young people is more important than ever, especially now that 16 and 17-year-olds can vote for the first time.

It goes without saying our social services and education teams work closely with young people every day, and there’s much more we can be proud of.

For many years we’ve used the Big Conversation to reach almost 10,000 young people to have their say on important issues. We’ve also worked with the Children’s Commissioner and partners to co-ordinate our efforts.

A panel of young people recently interviewed candidates for our Education Director post and a similar panel will help recruit a Head of Service shortly. Our annual High 5 Awards engage and recognise young people, and in recent months our elections team and others have been engaging teenagers to register to vote in May’s elections.

During the pandemic we’ve been unable to engage face-to-face with children and young people and, while we’ve reached many young people digitally, there are some who remain digitally excluded or uncomfortable engaging in this way.

But now we have to work as a corporate organisation to recognise the issues that are important to young people and find the best ways of engaging them. We must ensure their voices are heard when developing strategies and policies.

This means creating formal and effective engagement routes so that we understand how the Council’s decisions affect children and young people and how we can support them to influence decision-making.

To ensure we get this right, we’ll be co-producing this with children and young people. Who better to know what they’re interested in than young people themselves?

I’ll update you in the coming weeks but please consider how we can all engage young people to help shape what we do.

Covid update

The Covid restrictions will be eased again this weekend with up to six people able to meet outdoors, and outside hospitality opening up from Monday. Thanks to our enforcement team and others who are supporting businesses to re-open and dealing with groups congregating in various hot-spots. It seems with each passing week we’re able to do more things that we once took for granted. We just need to keep being sensible. If you’re in work, please remember to wear face masks in communal areas and when sharing vehicles.

Good news and thanks

We’ll be bidding for more funding to help modernise some of our services. We’ve already gained Welsh Government funding to identify where internet of things sensors can be used. This includes alerts when bins are getting full, alerts to potential flooding, information around building occupancy, and in social care and health if someone has not moved around for some time or not taken their medication. Using sensors isn’t completely new to us, but these projects will significantly increase their use if we can secure the next round of funding. This partnership work is part of the City Deal Digital strand with Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot. Thank you to all our staff involved.

Thanks to Kevin Webb and his corporate property team for ensuring five school canteens were refurbished during the pandemic. It’s a great effort at a time when providing meals to pupils has become even more important. The feedback from the schools has been really positive.

It’s World Book Night tonight and our library service is giving away 1,000 copies of the Matt Haig book The Midnight Library to celebrate. They’re one of only 10 library services in the UK to be chosen for the initiative that aims to encourage people who wouldn’t normally pick up a book to have a good read. Hundreds have been given away already to elderly people who’ve been shielding from Covid this last year and prisoners at Swansea jail. My thanks to the library services team for their efforts.

Best wishes to Amanda Hegarty who’s retired from her role as service manager at Llanfair care home. Amanda worked in Swansea since 2003, initially at Earlsmore before joining Llanfair where she has shown outstanding leadership over many years, especially during the pandemic.

The vaccine programme in Swansea is making a huge impact to our lives as we slowly begin to return to some normality. More than 267,000 vaccines (including second jabs) have been given in the Swansea Bay region which means there are fewer people with Covid, fewer people dying and fewer people in hospital. Our infection rate is just over 30 people per 100,000, which is remarkable given that just a few months ago it was above 700!

All of this is really good news and it’s enabling the Welsh Government to ease restrictions. This week we’ve seen non-essential shops re-open and I’m grateful to all our officers involved in preparing for this and ensuring shoppers and shop workers are safe.

Our local health board has a vaccination reserve list which our staff can sign-up to and can get the vaccine at short notice if there are supplies at the end of each day. I know a number of people who’ve done this and had their jab a lot quicker than expected.

The national restrictions mean we still have to work from home where we can, but officers are working on the logistics of how we may return to work in the months ahead. This is all about forward planning and isn’t a green light to return to work now or the near future. I’ll keep you posted on this, but it’ll be a number of months before we see some orderly return to our offices, and even then it won’t be a return to pre-pandemic working.

Despite all the good news, we still need to follow the guidance and set an example in our communities. Thank you for all your patience and support on this.

The pandemic has brought many challenges and one of the biggest facing us was ensuring our staff safety by having enough PPE in place at the right times. I’m delighted that colleagues from Building Services, Procurement and Social Services have been recognised for their outstanding efforts in this. They’ve been shortlisted in the GO Awards Wales for the Covid-19 Outstanding Response Award. They procured and issued many millions of items of PPE since the start of the pandemic and continue to provide essential PPE for all care settings throughout Swansea. This has been team working at its best and I’m grateful to everyone for their efforts and good luck in the awards later this month.

On the move

It’s great to see our central transport unit have worked around the pandemic and completed their move from Pipehouse Wharf to their new premises at Viking Way on the Winch Wen Industrial Estate. There’s been a big investment in new workshop and fleet facilities, including two new MOT bays which will be available later this year for MOT tests, as well as upgrading workshop equipment to support our large corporate fleet.

Happy retirement

We’re saying goodbye to a few of our cleaning staff in the coming weeks. Gloria Morgan, is retiring after 36 years, Thomas Howells is taking a well-earned break after 28 years and June Owen is retiring after 15 years’ service. Thank you for your excellent service and have a wonderful retirement.

Phil Roberts is on annual leave this week. The blog will return next week.

Thanks for visiting.

It’s great news that more of the pandemic restrictions in Wales are being lifted, but there could soon be a nasty sting in the tail.

The latest review of restrictions means we’ll soon be able to travel outside of Wales, use non-essential shops and even get an outdoor pint. But this week we’ve seen a worrying trend with many missed vaccination appointments and a local outbreak in Clase, largely due to people gathering indoors. And there were huge amounts of rubbish along Swansea Bay and our beaches as crowds of people gathered to enjoy the sunny weather.

It’s been a long and difficult year for all of us and whilst it’s understandable people want to return to normality, we really can’t afford to ease up now because if this trend continues we’ll be heading for another lockdown.

Easter is a time families come together. Mine is no different to anyone else’s but we just need to be careful and follow the rules when dropping off Easter eggs to loved ones, popping to see friends or simply shopping or exercising.

As a council we’re issuing messages to encourage people to follow the latest guidance, but as individuals we can also play our part by being seen to stick to the rules. I’ve placed on record many times my thanks to you all for your amazing efforts, so let’s not throw away the sacrifices we’ve all made during the past year.

My thanks to our cleansing teams for helping to clear up our beaches and beauty spots, and also the efforts of volunteer litter-pickers who were out in force.

New fund

We’ve got a great opportunity to help our recovery from the pandemic with a new Government fund worth £240m across Wales over the next four years. It’s going to be based on competitive bids to support our existing efforts, including regeneration, transport and culture. There’s a deadline of June 18 which means we need to act quickly and put forward schemes for Cabinet to agree to go forward. We’ll be up against other councils and our officers will be working on this in the next few weeks and I’m grateful for their efforts to get this done in such a short time. There’s also a smaller revenue Community Regeneration Fund for which we’ll shortly launch an expressions of interest process for businesses and organisations to submit bids as part of a maximum £3m for Swansea. More details will follow in due course and we’d like to staff to promote these opportunities to ensure maximum visibility within our communities

Elections efforts

Our elections preparations are going well in the face of more challenges than ever. We’ve now finalised our list of polling stations, but due to the pandemic a number of changes have had to be made so please check to see if your usual polling station has changed. My thanks to the elections team for making this possible, but also to Rob Myerscough and Lynn Martin in Corporate Building Services for securing five portacabins after our suppliers let us down at the last minute.

Stepping up

Well done to staff in our Client Transport Unit who’ve been doing their bit for charity. Cath Swain, our Integrated Transport Unit Manager, is walking 10,000 steps a day in aid of Cancer Research UK, raising more than £600 so far. And Sian Corney, our Business Support Officer, is walking 10,000 steps a day in aid of Maggie’s. Sian has collected £65 so far. The team also held a socially-distanced raffle which raised £250 to be shared between the two charities.

Finally, thank you for your continuing efforts in these difficult times, and I hope you can all have a relaxing and enjoyable Easter break. And for those of you working over the bank holiday, thank you it’s really appreciated.