Archives for July 2023

Thank you to all our staff who’ve put in a tremendous effort during the past year. Our performance report for 2022/23 shows 69% of our performance indicators are either meeting or bettering their target. And 56% are either showing an improvement or maintaining the trend. Given the challenges we face, this really is a great effort by all of you. We know there’s still work to do in some areas and we’d always want to improve, but for now, let’s celebrate what you’ve achieved. We are reviewing our PIs for 23/24 to ensure they align with the steps set out in our Corporate Plan. This ensures the work you’re doing each day helps us achieve our overall aims. We’re also looking at how we get feedback from citizens to see how satisfied they are with what we’re doing, which may include a staff and residents survey in early autumn.

And the good news keeps coming!!

Six of our parks have been awarded Green Flag status, recognising the vital role they play in boosting residents’ well-being and improving the natural environment. Clyne Gardens, Singleton Botanical Gardens, Brynmill Park, Parc Llewelyn, Cwmdonkin Park and Victoria Park have all gained the prestigious status.

We’re also up for two more national awards. An initiative by our community engagement team to encourage older people to get out and about after the pandemic is shortlisted in the Best Health and Wellbeing Initiative and Best Service category at the APSE awards. At the same time, our newly-built housing at West Cross is in the Housing, Construction and Building Service category. A pair of bungalows were built entirely by apprentices where practically possible, giving them invaluable experience as well as a huge sense of achievement. Well done to everyone involved and good luck at the awards.

The success of our City Deal projects is another reason to celebrate. The Arena has attracted big names and more than 241,000 visits in its first year, but other projects like 71-72 Kingsway where we’re transforming the former nightclub site into modern work spaces for tech and digital businesses are having an impact too. We’ve had positive talks with a range of potential tenants, hopefully bringing jobs and more footfall to the city centre. The City Deal projects are being independently assessed in a Gateway Review and we’ll have the results soon.

I’ve previously mentioned the work we’re doing to improve the way service users help shape our policies and improve services. Our work with experts, called Co-Pro Lab, will give us a draft co-production policy by September and is creating a group of coproduction champions across our services. We’ll be using the approach on some of our transformation projects later this year and assessing where we can use coproduction methods effectively. My thanks to all those involved in their input into the vital policy development.

Ness Young has been appointed Director of Corporate Services after doing a great job as interim for the past year. Ness brings a wealth of experience to the job and I look forward to working with her in the coming years. And congratulations to Gabrielle Jenkins who works in our library stock management section and has been included in the CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) 125 List. It recognises 125 young library professionals making a positive impact. Gabby was nominated for her work on anti-racism.

Some of you may be aware that one of the gardeners in our parks team, Ian Sparrowhawk, tragically passed away last week following an incident at work. Ian was taken to hospital by air ambulance but did not regain consciousness. Ian was well-known and a much-loved member of the parks family which is grieving the loss of one of their own. He joined the Council in December 1983, beginning with the team in Ravenhill and worked within the Parks Service throughout his career, most recently as part of the team based in Mynydd Newydd. Ian leaves a wife, two sons and grandchildren. My condolences and thoughts are with Ian’s family, friends and colleagues among the parks team at this very sad and difficult time.

Yesterday I joined councillors and officers on visits to see progress on two significant heritage projects the council has been involved with – Palace Theatre and Hafod Copperworks. It was great to see momentum at the Palace which will become a workspace for creative businesses. We were at Hafod for the official opening of the new Penderyn Distillery, the culmination of a painstaking effort to create jobs and a new industrial heritage tourist attraction at the former copperworks site. I recommend you pay a visit. Both projects have had significant funding and input from the council and they’re great examples of how we protect local heritage, imaginatively repurposing landmarks for the modern age. My thanks to Tracy Nichols, Paul Relf, Elliott Williams and Richard Horlock and the wider team for their contribution to these important success stories.

I was very pleased that Swansea Council hosted the APSE Wales Annual General Meeting and Strategic Forum on Wednesday. I mention APSE in my blog from time to time because its work promoting best practice in local government has an influence on our own improvement agenda, affecting the services we provide every day. Congratulations to Cllr Lewis who was re-elected Chair of APSE Wales and to Chris Cutforth, re-elected as Wales Secretary of APSE.

On Tuesday I attended the formal launch of the European U-18 Hockey Tournament at Swansea University’s Sports Park, along with Mark Wade, Deputy Leader Andrea Lewis, Jamie Rewbridge and Dave Jones from our sports development team. It was great to see such an event taking place in Swansea and to meet some of our rising under-18 players representing Wales. It was also good to hear from Hockey Wales CEO Paul Whapham – who used to work for us – about the great partnership that they have with the council and our sports development team. My thanks to all involved in supporting this event but also the wider support for developing sport and participation in Swansea.

The sport continues this weekend with the World Triathlon Para Series making a welcome return today and tomorrow, with IRONMAN 70.3 taking place on Sunday. They’ve been preceded by a week-long Para Sport Festival featuring many different sports at a range of locations around the city. Sport contributes so much to health and wellbeing, so thanks are due to Special Events and the Sport and Health teams for making it all happen.

My congratulations to two very long-serving members of staff who have clocked up almost a century of service between them, Carole Billingham and Martin Pritchard. Carole, among other work, has been delivering Rhyme Times at libraries to engrossed youngsters since 1975 and is still going strong after 48 years. Martin started as an apprentice in 1978 and now works in Building Services’ architectural design group and will be retiring at the end of this month. My best wishes and thanks to them both for the future.

Today we’ve opened a £15m investment in transforming facilities for pupils and staff at Bishopston Comprehensive School. The past three years have seen major improvements including a new two-storey extension providing science labs, a state-of-the-art drama studio and art classrooms, while the school now benefits from a new reception and senior leadership area. It’s been jointly funded by us and the Welsh Government as part of a £150m investment in new and improved schools in Swansea. Thank you to all our officers involved in yet another great job.

Staff have the chance to learn more about co-production with some free training sessions. We’re making co-production a key feature of developing services and policies, by involving service users and those affected, so it’d be good to get as many staff trained as possible. The first session is about Co-producing Strategies on July 18 at 9.30am -11am. Book your place here.

The second session is about forming groups for co-production with tips and tools for recruiting members, managing expectations, developing a shared code of conduct, accessibility and creating a two-way process.   It’s on July 31 at 10.30-12pm and you can book a place here. 

Our complaints system has been updated to make it easier for staff to record all information and to meet deadlines. Complaints can take a lot of time and resources to manage and I’m hoping the new system will help us become more efficient and effective. We’ve also just had our latest complaints figures that show whilst there was an increase in the first half of last year, the number that were upheld has fallen. We’ve seen some spikes in a few areas and service managers are looking to make improvements. This issue is important in terms of our reputation, so any improvements we make in our service delivery and how we handle complaints will have an impact.

I know corporate governance can sound boring, but it’s important and it affects us all. We’ve had our draft internal audit report which shows we can have confidence that our governance works well, including our departmental meetings and statutory committees. We’ve already acted on the recommendations so thank you to everyone involved.

Last weekend’s Wales Airshow was another fantastic event that helped showcase Swansea and the council. The event takes many months of detailed planning and I’m grateful to all the staff involved who did another great job.

Our housing development in Cherry Blossom Close has been shortlisted for the Inside Housing Development Awards. It’s up for the Best affordable housing development award and we’ll find out on September 29 if we’ve won. Well done to all the staff involved in this project.

You have the chance to give your views on our performance and how we can improve. We’ve already run two pilot Digital Citizens’ Panel sessions which have gone well and now staff can get involved by clicking on this link.

Finally, as previously advised, I am keen to get out and meet as many staff as possible. So please if you have a project underway or an event, management meeting or training day please let me know and I would be happy to come along, even if it’s just to say hello and meet you. I also intend to shortly start ward visits with our councillors and will be sharing dates as soon as I am able.