Some great news today: we’ve been shortlisted for Council of the Year in the APSE Annual Service Awards 2022. You might remember last week I mentioned seven of our teams were shortlisted for awards at the event being staged at Swansea Arena next month. Being nominated for Council of the Year is on top of them and is a fantastic reflection of all the innovative practice and hard work done by you for the people of Swansea over the last few years. My congratulations to you all.
Regeneration
On Monday I had the pleasure of visiting two major heritage regeneration projects with our Interim Director of Place Mark Wade – Palace Theatre and Hafod-Morfa Copperworks – which are helping to change our city skyline and develop our economy.
While there’s still lots of scaffolding around the 134-year-old Grade II listed Palace Theatre, there’s real progress being made inside. The £5m scheme will make an important contribution to the look and feel of the High Street.
I was also pleased to see great strides being made at Hafod-Morfa Copperworks. When completed, it’s going to be a major attraction, drawing in many tens of thousands of visitors every year. The latest milestone will soon see the site handed over to Welsh drinks specialist Penderyn for fitting out as a distillery and visitor centre.
My thanks go to Paul Relf and Tracy Nichols and the teams for their effort on such important projects and, as I’ve said before in this blog, if you’d like me to visit your workplace for a chat and to show me around, please do get in touch.
Grant applications
Projects like the Palace Theatre and Hafod-Morfa Copperworks are often made possible thanks to successful applications for external funding. This week we’ve put in bids for millions of pounds of support from the UK Government under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and the Levelling Up Fund.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is part of a series of funds that go some way to replacing EU funding following Brexit. Swansea Council is leading on the fund for South West Wales, and we’ve now submitted the £130m Regional Investment Plan setting out at high level how the funds will be used. Swansea’s allocation of £34m sounds like a lot, but in practice bids will be very competitive and we need to ensure a range of partners are delivering funds alongside our own departments.
We have also submitted four projects to the Levelling Up Fund, which is for large-scale capital regeneration programmes. The projects include the Lower Swansea Valley, consolidating Hafod-Morfa Copperworks mentioned above and works around the Strand tunnels. Our bid also aims to expand and enhance Swansea Museum, develop a City Centre programme working with Urban Splash to extend public realm links around the Arena to both the city core and the sea, and prepare for new office and niche retail offers. There are also proposals for Port Eynon facilities and major works on the Fabian Way corridor to provide access to a string of development sites, not least Blue Eden. Combined, these bids are worth over £100m and will make a huge difference for our city in future years. The UK Government is due to make announcements on the successful projects in October this year. My thanks to all those who’ve been involved in putting together these strong cases for support.
Talking about culture
On August 15 I’ll be heading up the latest instalment of the Let’s Talk…. staff discussion series. We’ll be looking at the council’s working culture and how it impacts what we do to support service delivery and our residents every day. It’s an online event, so it’s easy to join in. I hope it’ll be a lively session and if you want to drop by, please register here. If you can’t make it and want to ask a question, please send an email to Rachel.Healion@swansea.gov.uk
Thank you
This weekend Swansea’s hosting two international sporting events, the Volvo 2022 World Triathlon Para Series on Saturday and IRONMAN 70.3 on Sunday. Thank you to our cultural services’ special events team, the highways team and many others within the council who are working hard to ensure both events are a big success. If you can, do get out there and cheer on the competitors.
Well done also to the parks team for retaining coveted Green Flag awards at six of our city’s favourite parks. It’s quite an achievement to maintain such high standards year after year, and I know the hard work is really appreciated by the public.
Annual leave
I’m on leave next week, so my blog will return in a fortnight. If you’re taking leave, I hope you have a great time.
Great to see Swansea’s heritage being preserved.