Archives for September 2021

The Covid situation is getting worse and we’re now heading for a really tough winter with all our services under pressure.

The number of cases continue to rise, particularly among younger people in our communities. Some are now making the case for a more draconian approach to wearing face masks and social distancing to help combat the increasing infection rates.

The pressure on our services is huge and it’s increasing by the day. We’ve been holding talks with the Welsh Government and Public Health Wales about how we can prioritise social care services to those who need them most, whilst encouraging families to help support loved ones with lesser needs.

We took this approach during the first wave of the pandemic and it’s the only way we’re going to get through this winter because we simply can’t keep up with growing demands.

There’s also talks at a Wales-wide level on the crisis facing our public protection services. Environmental health, licensing and trading standards teams – here in Swansea and across Wales – have been under the cosh throughout the pandemic. Our teams have had to enforce Government regulations, advise businesses, inspect premises, investigate outbreaks and oversee the TTP service among many other things. All of these extra challenges have brought these services almost to breaking point.

Despite their very best efforts there’s just no way our teams can provide other business as usual services to the normal standards which is worrying given the kind of public protection services they provide.

These two issues are a major concern for us. I’m also conscious that many of our schools are facing increasing difficulties as a result of increasing infections of both staff and pupils.

During earlier waves we were able to move staff around to help support these services, but the harsh reality is that all our services are struggling so we don’t have that option open to us.

It’s clear the public are not aware of the scale of these problems either in Swansea or across Wales. We need strong national leadership to set out these challenges and to take the necessary actions and support councils if we are to get through this winter.  And above all it’s essential that our behaviours reflect the fact the virus is still with us and we all have a personal responsibility to act safely.

It probably feels like I’m only talking about Covid each week. The truth is it’s the single biggest challenge we’ve ever faced and it’s threatening everything we do as a council. It’s important you know the challenges but also what we’re doing to help you in your job. Please stay safe and thank you for your continued efforts.

National recognition

Even though we’re battling Covid, we continue to make headlines for all the right reasons. Having won the MJ award for best social housing for our More Homes project, the judges gave us a glowing report – “What stood out from the Swansea submission was the complete understanding of the need to gather together lessons and experience and share this nationally ‘working as a nation’ to address best practice in affordable housing delivery. Strong political stewardship and commitment to ensuring true sustainable, low carbon outcomes that reduced costs to residents were very clearly shown to be delivered through the programme. An attention to detail to ensure ‘incremental gains’ through testing pilot projects and applying learning was also a testament to ensuring innovation added value. A strong commitment to post occupancy evaluation and links with universities mean outcomes are measured and fed into the future local programme but also nationally to other providers. The development of a process map for the widest project inputs and influences showed a continuous learning approach that made Swansea a clear winner.”

Well done to everyone involved on your superb work.

Making a splash

And another great example is this week’s launch of our Shaping Swansea initiative where we’ve brought on board an award-winning regeneration company Urban Splash to develop seven key sites across the city, including the Civic Centre. This is a huge step forward in bringing more investment and jobs to Swansea. To pull this off during a global pandemic is remarkable and couldn’t have been done without the tenacity of Huw Mowbray and his team.

The situation facing our services was described by one of our directors this week as the perfect storm

A unique combination of increased demand from the public, staff either being off sick due to Covid or having to self-isolate, staff leaving and problems with recruiting key workers are all putting immense pressure on many of our services. Add to this the problems brought on by Brexit and we are indeed facing the perfect storm!

None of us will have ever known a situation like this where so many problems come together at once.

These problems are most acute in social care where staff are facing really difficult issues. But other services are feeling it too.

Our social services were already fragile having spent the past 18 months battling through the pandemic and the unprecedented challenges it brought. But now we’re facing even more problems and services are under greater strain than at any other time during the pandemic.

Our domiciliary care service which provides care in people’s homes is more than 1,400 staff hours short to meet demand, that’s the equivalent of about 50 staff. There are 170 people on the waiting list and that figure is rising. We have huge backlogs in assessing people’s needs. During the first two waves of the pandemic we prioritised urgent cases and the plan was to catch up when things got better. But now during this third wave we’re unable to recruit the extra staff needed to deal with the backlog.

And in our residential care homes we’ve seen a rapid increase in Covid cases both in staff and residents, despite all having two vaccinations. We’ve put in place emergency plans by bringing in staff from elsewhere to prop up our care homes but that’s basically robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We’re doing all we can to support staff and services – CMT this week agreed to provide permanent dedicated HR support in social care to lessen the burden on managers so they can focus on front-line priorities. We’re about to work with an agency to help clear the backlog of assessments and we’re working with the health board to try to recruit more staff without robbing local care companies as that would only cause more problems.

It’s not just social care that’s facing problems. We’re losing staff in key roles – whether it’s drivers, quantity surveyors, social workers or a host of other jobs – and the competition to recruit staff is immense due to a shortage of key workers and other employers offering incentives as we all scramble for staff.

Our in-house recruitment team is working wonders at the moment and have made a few changes and prioritised key areas of work to help speed the process, including a new recruiting platform to attract more applicants. I know teams are desperate to recruit staff but please bear these issues in mind as there may be unavoidable delays in filling posts.

Elsewhere our revenue and benefits team is facing unprecedented demand for self-isolation payments to be paid. During the first two weeks of September alone they had 623 applications and managed to process 339 of them and dealt with more than 800 email inquiries. The team is battling just to keep on top of the number of people applying for these payments. In an amazing effort the team has paid out almost £1.3 million since the scheme started last October.

It’s not just a lack of available people and skills that’s causing issues. We’ve all heard on the news for several months about building materials being in short supply and seeing huge price increases. That’s started to impact on us and our capital projects which now face higher costs and delays.

On a more positive note our schools have now returned and I want to thank all our school staff and those in our education team who’ve worked so hard to make this happen. Schools still have a number of controls in place to help keep pupils and staff safe. I know they are working incredibly hard every day to make these arrangements work and still give pupils the best possible education in very testing circumstances.

I’ve only highlighted a few examples here and I know there are issues in many other services. It’s been a very tough 18 months and the coming autumn and winter may be just as tough.

I know the burden on you is huge and I can only thank you again for all the effort you’re putting in to keep providing services to those who need them most.

Despite all of this, council business carries on as best it can. I was delighted to see the latest group of our Welsh learners recognised for their achievements. Thirteen staff attended a virtual ceremony – Sarah McCoubrey, Lisa Tucker, Emma Lewis, Gary Mahoney, Robert Merrill, Leanne Ahern and Adele Thomas for Mynediad Level 1. Tom Jones, Adele Thomas and Paul Williams Jones for Mynediad Level 2. Adrian Chard, David Williams and Robert Morgan for Sylfaen 1.

If you’re interested in learning Welsh find out more here: https://staffnet.swansea.gov.uk/learnwelsh

The number of Covid cases in Swansea is almost at a record high and they’re continuing to rise.

The city currently has 708 cases per 100,000 people, the second highest in Wales.

In response, local health officials are encouraging people to ensure they get both vaccinations as soon as possible to help reduce the spread of the virus.

Our senior politicians and officers met with Public Health Wales on Friday to try to understand the trends and developments in infection rates. This will need to be monitored locally, regionally and nationally.

With this number of cases in the community it’s inevitable more of our staff will be affected, which will impact on services. We already have real concerns in some of our services, especially residential and domiciliary care as the pressure remains intense in these areas.

You can use lateral flow tests (LFTs) at home before coming into work. If positive, you should self-isolate and arrange to take a PCR test to confirm. Let your line manager know straight away and do not come into work. If the test result is positive, then the test kit should be double-bagged using the bags provided with the kit and kept for 72 hours prior to disposal in your black bag waste at home. There’s more information about LFTs here.

I’ve met with CEO of the health board to better understand the current position with the impact on our hospitals.  We’ll need to work closely together as regional partners to make sure the pressure is contained.

One of our concerns discussed with PHW was the return to schools and I’m aware that a number of our schools are currently struggling as a result of staff shortages because of Covid infection.

This is a situation we must monitor continuously and be prepared to escalate to the national level.  Few of us relish the thought of a return to stricter lockdown messages but it might become necessary if things get worse.  That depends on the degree to which we all continue to take precautions voluntarily.

Although restrictions have lifted, there’s nothing stopping any of us choosing to wear a face mask, socially-distance and avoid large gatherings indoors.

And above all I’d encouraged everyone to get vaccinated.

Top award

Congratulations this morning to our teams in housing and corporate building services. Last night they scooped the award for ‘Best Housing, Regeneration or New Build initiative’ at the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) awards, the local government Oscars.

This award was for our More Homes new-build initiative at Colliers Way 2. We’ve been leading the way in developing a new generation of council homes that include innovative energy-saving technology that keeps fuel bills as low as possible.

These 18 new properties have been called homes as power stations because they’re able to store and use the power they generate through solar roofs, battery storage and mechanical ventilation heat recovery systems.  We were also shortlisted at the APSE awards for ‘Council of the Year’, for ‘Best Service Team Housing & Construction’ and for ‘Best commercialisation and Entrepreneurship initiative’.

All of these are great achievements and recognition from our peers of the fact that despite the pandemic we’ve continued to innovate and provide very high quality services to the people of Swansea when they’ve needed us most.

Staff Survey

Don’t forget you’ve just a week to have your say in this year’s staff survey. The deadline is September 17. It’s important to take part as a feedback report is considered in-depth by CMT and actions are taken. Join in here.

We all knew there’d be challenges as we emerged from the Covid restrictions but the impact of rising infection rates is hitting our services.

We have the highest rates in Wales, 664 per 100,000 people – in the past we’d have been in lockdown on the back of these figures. Thankfully, the vaccine is reducing the number of hospital admissions, serious illness and deaths.

Second is Neath Port Talbot with just over 600 so the region and our health board is in the eye of the storm.

While hospitals are managing to cope at the moment, some of our services are creaking, particularly domiciliary care, as a result of staff shortages and the closure of a number of independent care homes.

Our TTP team is also straining to manage the response to a rapid increase in the number of people testing positive for Covid-19 over the last couple of weeks.  CMT is monitoring the situation and will take the necessary action to keep services running. We’ll be discussing the latest trends with PHW this morning (Friday) and consider any other actions we need to take as a region to protect the public.

Infection rates are expected to remain high as we continue to return to some kind of normal. So the main message is Covid-19 is still with us and we all have a role to play in minimising its spread.

As schools go back we’ve been working with them to ensure pupils and staff are as safe as possible. There are some changes compared to last term, the most significant being around isolation which will hopefully see an end to whole year groups and bubbles having to learn from home. My thanks to the schools and our education teams for their efforts.

Performance updates

I was delighted to read the latest performance report that we’ll shortly be taking through the approval processes.  We reached or bettered 81% of our targets which is an amazing result considering the disruption to our normal patterns of working.  Thanks to Richard Rowlands and his team for pulling the report together.

CMT also discussed the Quarter 1 budget performance and again it’s a positive tale to tell. Directorates are managing resources well and containing spending pressures plus our team in Finance have done a great job in recouping Covid-related expenditure from the Welsh Government.  There’s no room for complacency, though, as we attempt to ensure that our finances are in a healthy position in the advent of the inevitable pressure on public finances caused by the cost of the pandemic nationally.

Well done

More good news on awards this week, this time ahead of the Welsh Housing Awards on September 30. The awards recognise and celebrate the creativity, passion, and innovation across the sector in Wales and our housing and building services teams have been shortlisted in two categories. One is for Partnership Working to support the homeless at Ty Tom Jones and the other is for Innovation in Housing thanks to our project retrofitting homes in Craig Cefn Parc to make them greener and more efficient. More information here.

Thanks

The school holidays’ #FreeRideSwansea bus initiative has proved such a success that last night the Leader announced at Council plans for its return at October half-term and the Christmas holidays. Details are still being worked out but in the meantime my thanks to the teams who worked hard to make this brilliant scheme work so well.

My thanks also to the Copr Bay arena team for their incredible effort as the project counts down to completion. The latest step has seen limited testing of some of the 95,000 LED lights on the building’s wraparound panels – one of the first of its kind in Europe.  If the early tests are anything to go by then people are in for a fantastic treat once it’s finished.