Archives for April 2024

As we’ve just started a new financial year, appraisal season is also upon us. Everyone must have an appraisal. It’s your opportunity to talk to your manager in-depth about your role and plan for the future. It’s also a chance to highlight how your performance contributes to the council’s overall objectives, supporting the services we provide that touch the lives of residents every day. It’s important that everyone has an appraisal to allow two-way feedback but it also allows us to set our objectives for the year ahead and identify and training needs for our staff.  I had my appraisal this week with the council’s political leadership on the Chief Executive’s Appraisal and Remuneration Committee. We looked at seven themes; reputation, regional collaboration, city regeneration, our transformation programme, budget, our corporate priorities and plan as well as corporate governance. Alongside those themes are actions I have to take and measures by which my performance will be monitored and assessed over the coming year. It’s quite exacting and very challenging, as it should be but I’m really looking forward to the year ahead. I intend to go through the themes in more depth in future blogs but it goes without saying that the ability for me to deliver on these objectives is fundamentally dependent on your support. That’s why I continue to be grateful for your commitment and hard work every day.

We had a Cabinet and CMT away day yesterday which included an item on anti-social behaviour in our communities, including the city centre. This builds on the work undertaken by a recent scrutiny report by councillors which acknowledged anti-social behaviour is a challenging and complex issue, it has a real impact on those affected and there are no easy, overnight solutions. But the presentation we received outlined the good progress being made by us and our partner organisations in the city centre and elsewhere to tackle the problem. My thanks to Jane Whitmore, Lisa Wells and Phil John for their update. There are a few things for us to do over the coming weeks and months and one of these will to set up a cross-council ASB forum which will allow input from all the services involved in this agenda and we will be looking of nominations shortly.

Earlier this week CMT got a progress report from Kate Phillips, Head of Vulnerable Learners, in our education team. Supporting children and young people in education settings who have complex physical or mental health needs is among the most important work we do. Although the work is led by Kate and her team, the support we provide comes from across the council and helps change young lives for the better. My thanks to Kate and all those involved. 

My congratulations to our child and family team who yesterday won a prestigious Social Care Wales’ 2024 Accolade for giving children and families a new brighter future through the Born into Care project. Born into Care is a multi-agency project that supports parents at risk of having their child taken into care, from the early stages of pregnancy through to the child’s birth and beyond. Families’ voices and experiences are at the heart of what the team does.

Our award-winning indoor market has won yet more praise. This time it’s from the National Market Traders Federation (NMTF) who named our market supervisor Darren Cox their Market Manager of the Year. Well done Darren and the whole market team whose innovative work was also showcased to much acclaim by their peers at the NMTF conference in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Finally, this week I had pleasure of attending the Varsity rugby matches between Swansea and Cardiff universities. It’s important to attend occasions like this to develop and maintain links with key partners like the universities as well as ensure we in Swansea remain a focal point for sporting excellence. On the pitch, both teams put in great performances and while the girls team came off second-best this time, the boys secured a well-deserved victory.

With a workforce of more than 11,000 delivering hundreds of services that touch the lives of thousands of people from birth to old age every day it’s fair to say we’re a large and complex organisation. So if you’re a new starter you might feel a bit daunted about exactly who we are and how you fit in. That’s why, as part of our workforce development strategy, we’re reviewing and revamping our induction programme. It’s early days and I’ll keep you posted about developments, but I caught up with the HR&OD team last week to go over an outline of how the programme will work. It’s planned that for those who don’t have regular access to the intranet, inductions will be delivered face-to-face by line managers with online support. Those who are largely office-based will likely have access to an online eLearning package. I’ll be part of the process, delivering my own perspective via video, welcoming the new starters and highlighting what I think about who we are and what we do. If you’ve got ideas on how we can make inductions more meaningful I’d like to hear from you. After all, the one thing we all have in common is that we were all starters once, but for some of us, it’s a little longer ago.

Many of us who have council email accounts will know of the attempted cyber-attack on our network earlier this week by criminals targeting us with an email purporting to be from a ‘HR manager’. Thankfully, it didn’t succeed and I’m grateful to all those who did the right thing by reporting it to our IT team. I’d also like to thank IT for its robust approach to keeping our data safe. It’s an important lesson that we all have our part to play in keeping such attacks at bay by being vigilant and not taking at face value every email or online correspondence each of us receives.

Yesterday Cabinet agreed to proceed with a feasibility study to determine the potential value of a district heating network that could help cut the carbon footprint of major public and private sector buildings in the city centre area. It’s an important milestone, partly because the study is being funded by the UK government and provides further confidence that we are moving closer to delivering the wider lagoon and Blue Eden project which would be a world-first innovation on our doorstep.

Also yesterday I was pleased to visit Olchfa Comprehensive School for the official opening of our latest 3G sports pitch. The £1.6m project will be a boost for sport at the school and will support the health and wellbeing of the wider community too. My thanks to those who’ve delivered this pitch and others like it around the city.

Our libraries service has been shortlisted in the UK Libraries Connected Awards for the outstanding work Swansea Central Library is doing to become a place of sanctuary and support that welcomes new people settling here. All our libraries are sanctuaries at the heart of their communities, so well done to all those involved and good luck in the final.

Congratulations also to our tourism team for their innovative video initiative promoting our city to the wider world. Featuring stories from local people and businesses, video views in the last 12 months have surpassed the 1m mark – significant backing for an industry worth £500m a year locally. They say Swansea is our happy place. They’re right.

Red tape is an issue faced by almost every large organisation any of us come into contact with, either in our work or personal lives. Put simply, red tape is official rules and processes that need to be in place to comply with our obligations but may seem unnecessary and get in the way of delivering results. In Swansea we need to constantly look for ways we can be more efficient so that we can deliver services for councillors and customers more effectively and sometimes red tape can impact on this. On Wednesday Leadership group reviewed progress on our efforts to remove red tape by simplifying the way we do things. A good example is the way we write reports. Lots of officers have to write them on a range of topics for audiences including councillors, senior officers and the public. To help save time, simplify the process and achieve more consistency in the way they’re written we’re going to look at the process involved and also put some new guidance together for officers. We’ll discuss with councillors before implementing it and I’ll keep you posted on that. In the meantime, if you know of any examples where our processes are a bit clunky and could be simplified by cutting out red tape, do let me know.

I was very pleased to be taken on a tour of our new IT data room at the Guildhall this week. It’s undergone a major £1m upgrade, transforming it into a cutting-edge facility with advanced backup and disaster recovery systems. The aim was to improve security, reliability, and backup systems while also reducing energy costs. Digital Services are in the process of transferring systems from the Civic Centre to the new facility, as well as to our Cloud environment. This upgrade means better, more resilient IT systems for our staff to benefit from now and in the years ahead, which is critical to ensure all our services can be delivered. My thanks to Jo Harley, Andrew Morris, Richard Jones and Brian Morris for the tour and the wider digital teams who delivered the project.

I caught up with my staff engagement group this week where we had a good discussion about the upcoming staff survey. We’re finalising the questions now and we’ve agreed that it’ll be part of our ongoing staff engagement programme. Look out for it as it’s expected to be published by early May and the more who take part, the more impact its results will have.

The Police and Crime Commissioner elections are due on May 2 and our elections team will have some new rules to deal with – one of them is about postal votes. You can find out more here. But the main message is that if you want to make sure your postal vote counts the best way to do it is to post it in a Royal Mail post box. Any other method runs a risk of it being rejected.

Good news this week – our work to transform Hafod Copperworks and education facilities at Bishopston Comprehensive has been recognised by the prestigious Constructing Excellence in Wales awards scheme. They’ve been shortlisted in the regeneration and retrofit categories respectively, so good luck to the teams who’ve made these important projects happen.

It’s goodbye this month to David Walker after an entire career of service at the council. David joined the parks team 46 years ago straight from school before moving to the baling plant. There, his dedication and flexibility over 36 years have helped ensure, among other things, we’ve been able to operate a seven-day-a-week service for our residents. Thank you David, enjoy your retirement.

Later this month we’ll be launching our staff survey. It’s the first one we’ve done since before the pandemic, so you won’t need me to say just how much has changed in that time. I said when I took on the role that a key aspect for me is to improve communication and engagement with all our staff. In addition, as a result of the rising demand for services and the financial challenges all local authorities face, we can expect to see more change in the months and years ahead. These are among the reasons why we’re doing the survey now as part of our normal engagement work and why it’s vital you have the chance to speak up and, more importantly, you’re listened to and action is taken on your feedback. The survey is part of this wider engagement and will be a topic for consideration at my staff engagement group who next week will get a final chance to offer its thoughts on the final draft before publication. My thanks to Rhian Millar’s team and all those who’ve contributed to the process so far. Please let me know if you have any views on what we should be asking in the survey.

The staff engagement group will also be getting a presentation from an external company called My Money Matters, specialists in providing personal financial guidance and additional voluntary contribution (AVC) pension schemes for staff in public sector organisations like ours. We’re anticipating the outcome will be to help develop further our staff benefits offer for you to take advantage of. I will keep you posted.

Our elections team is in full swing planning for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections taking place on May 2. For the first time in Swansea voters going to the polls will need to take a form of ID with them such as a driving licence or passport. It’ll be an additional issue for staff to deal with and the elections team will be providing them with support. If you’re planning to vote and you want to know more about acceptable forms of ID please go to this link.

In a previous blog I’ve mentioned a new Naming Policy which enables us to name civic facilities in honour of those who’ve made a significant contribution to the life or history of our city. Yesterday we officially re-named the Gloucester Room in Guildhall the Lilian Hopkin Room after our first-ever female Lord Mayor. Lilian was a well-known figure in the council and contributed hugely to the communities she served over many years, so this recognition is well deserved.

Finally, while most of us will hopefully have had the chance for some time out over Easter, I’d like to thank all those who were on duty or on call over the holiday period ensuring essential services our residents depend on continued to be maintained.