Archives for June 2022

One of my priorities is to improve staff engagement, so I’m pleased to say we’re making some good progress in a short space of time.

Thank you to our staff who’ve volunteered to be part of a new staff engagement group that’ll bring together people from across the council’s services to help improve the way we engage staff. Lee Wenham, our Head of Communications, will be working with this group to start work in the next few weeks, so please feel free to contact him with any ideas: Lee.wenham@swansea.gov.uk

We’re also looking at how we improve engagement with our managers who sit outside of CMT and Heads of Service. I met directors and HoS yesterday when we got together face-to-face for the first time since the start of the pandemic. This in itself was a big step forward on engagement and highlighted how Covid has affected engagement at all levels across the council. The main discussion was around how we can engage operational managers who lead our teams. I’ve asked a small group of HoS to consider how this could work and to develop plans.  I’m pleased with progress but there’s more to do – if you have any thoughts or ideas on engaging staff or topics you want discussed in this blog please let me know.

Budget update

CMT had an update on the budget situation this week and the outlook isn’t great. We all know from the situation at home that inflation and the cost of everything is hitting families hard. As a council we face the same pressures although through sound financial management this year looks OK. However everything we buy and operate is becoming more expensive and as we move forward, CMT and Cabinet will be discussing the potential implications and we’ll be engaging all of you in the coming months as we begin our budget planning for the year ahead and beyond. In the meantime, we’re asking all budget holders to carefully manage their spending and plan for the savings already built into next year’s budget.

We’re leading the way

Our efforts to embed children’s rights have been highlighted by the Children’s Commissioner and used to help inspire other councils in Wales. The work done by our Partnership and Involvement team and Penybryn School has been included in the Commissioner’s publication, The Right Way: a children’s human rights approach to additional learning needs. Our team worked with the school to embed a children’s rights approach, developing training around the principles of The Right Way Education, and supporting staff at the school to self-assess their children’s rights approach. It’s one of only two case studies included by the Commissioner. This is a great accolade for us – well done to everyone involved in this project.

Another award!

I’m delighted that we scooped another construction-related award at the Constructing Excellence Wales Awards. We were successful in the Integration and Collaboration category, being recognised for our work on the £8m Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Tan-y-Lan development in conjunction with main contractor Kier, architects Stride Treglown, engineers Hydrock and the school. Congratulations to the team on the award and creating a fantastic school.

Thank you for taking the time to read these blogs and again if there is anything you wish me to cover please feel free to respond or contact me directly.

Farewell

It’s farewell today to Kath Banks, who’s been one of our civic officers for the last eight years or so and has worked for the council for more than 30 years.

As a civic officer Kath became Swansea’s first-ever female Mace-Bearer – a role in Swansea’s civic life that dates back to the days of James I. Kath previously worked in the Corporate Management Team support, Engineers, Environment and Leisure and Culture.

The next few weeks will determine what we do and how we do it for the next five years. The new administration is now up and running and CMT is working with Cabinet to agree the priorities for their term in office.

We know from the recent election pledges the long list of proposals, but now we need to agree what we prioritise and how we’ll fund them. It’s an exciting time and it’s important for all of us because these will become all of our priorities and will shape our work each day.

We’ve started those discussions and yesterday CMT and Cabinet met to work through the proposals and prioritise them. These will be developed in the next few weeks with Council making the decision in due course as to their inclusion in our Corporate Plan which, in simple terms, is our strategy for the coming years. It’ll then be up to us as officers to implement these policies and initiatives.

We also need to consider how we fund the priorities. All the noises coming out of the UK Government are pretty negative in terms of future funding. Issues such as rising inflation and pay awards will place extra pressure on our finances. Ben Smith will be updating Heads of Service on the situation and the challenges we’re going to face in the coming months and years, and we will ensure the trade unions and staff are engaged fully in the process.

Why education matters to us all

Our education services are about to be inspected by Estyn. We may not all be directly involved, but the outcome of the inspection will have a big impact on the whole council. A good outcome would help to further improve our reputation and build confidence. I’d like to thank all our staff and councillors who’ve been preparing for the inspection and also our partners and stakeholders, including children, who’ve been sharing with Estyn their experiences of education services in Swansea. The inspection starts on June 27 and will last for a week with provisional feedback on July 1. We’ll need to wait until September for the final report.

Help for staff

Following feedback from staff, unions and councillors we’ve produced a staff handbook. It pulls together and tells the story of who we are as an organisation, highlights some of the good work we all do and signposts staff to some of the groups, support and benefits that are available to us. It should be a really useful guide and I’m grateful to everyone who’s contributed to it. I’ll give more details and launch it in my next blog.

Great news

Our Beyond Bricks and Mortar team won a highly commended accolade at the UK-wide Go Awards scheme for their work on our Copr Bay project. Thanks to their work, more than 8,000 person weeks of employment, apprenticeships and trainee placements were secured throughout the project’s construction. And more than 40% of the supply chain came from South West Wales, giving local businesses a boost.

Our efforts to make Caswell Bay more accessible has been recognised at the Celebrating Rural Wales Awards. Our Changing Places unit was one of five shortlisted in the Food and Tourism category and was praised by Rural Affairs Minister, Lesley Griffiths. We’ve also secured Welsh Government funding for another two Changing Places units in Mumbles and Rhossili. Well done to everyone involved.

One of the biggest challenges we face coming out of the pandemic is continuing to develop our local economy and helping to create growth and job opportunities.

This week we took another huge step in our regeneration plans when we hosted our friends from Skyline, a New Zealand based company that wants to create a fantastic visitor destination here in Swansea. Their plans for an outdoor adventure park on Kilvey Hill include a cable car system, zip lines and luge runs as part of an attraction aiming to open in 2025. We met with some of their senior figures before they went on to meet Welsh Government officials to help progress their proposals. We plan to take a report to Cabinet in July to sort out any remaining decisions and, subject to planning, we expect Skyline will start on site within 12 months. We took them on a tour of the £135m Copr Bay district, and they were impressed with the new arena. Along with the recent appointment of Urban Splash as our development partner for sites including the Civic Centre, we can see the various pieces of the jigsaw falling into place. Thank you to all the officers involved in organising the visit and their work in supporting this scheme.

Tourism video

During the visit we shared with Skyline a video produced by our Destination Management and Marketing Team in Cultural Services which highlights the results from its 2021 marketing campaign and the start of this year. This has also been shared with the local tourism industry and I thought would be of interest to our own workforce. 

If you can’t see the video on YouTube, you can see it on Microsoft Stream using your work login.

This highlights our commitment to supporting the economic recovery of the tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors.  The creativity and innovative approach to marketing has led to some really great results. The response from the sector has been excellent and they were delighted with the quality of the content the team has produced and, importantly, the results it is generating. It just serves to remind us of what a fantastic place Swansea Bay is to live, work, study and enjoy. Well done to the team. 

Staff engagement

Thank you to everyone who’s contacted me about staff engagement. It’s clear staff want to be involved in discussions that help shape what we do and how we do it. Based on the views I’ve had, the plan is to initially set up a council-wide engagement group who can support engagement across the council so that staff can feel involved and have a voice. If you want to get involved, please contact chris.peters-bond@swansea.gov.uk At the same time we’re also using staff feedback to reshape and improve Staffnet and we’ll be working with managers, especially in those areas where staff haven’t got ICT access to improve engagement on the ground. Please continue to post any suggested items you’d like me to cover in any future blogs. I’ll be covering our workforce development strategy and how I see the culture of the organisation in future blogs, but any further suggestions are welcome.

Hearts and minds

I’m always delighted by the commitment of our staff to help improve our communities and people’s lives. And often this goes beyond our day job. In a recent example, Keith Evans in our client transport team completed a fund-raising challenge to walk four Welsh peaks in four weeks, joined by colleagues Cathy Williams, Jillian Thomas and Sian Corney on a couple of the walks. The money raised has paid for an on-site defibrillator at our transport depot in Fforestfach.

Best wishes

Some of our long-serving staff in our building control team are about to retire. Sue Delve is retiring after 48 years of service, having joined straight from school in 1974. And Jackie Davey also leaves after 23 years. We thank them both for their loyal commitment. Also, Andrew Taylor recently retired, having worked for 37 years in a number of teams, including finance, audit and complaints. His parting shot was working at the recent elections, where I was able to see him before he retired. I would like to wish Andrew, Sue and Jackie all the very best for the future.