Praise for our teams

I want to start this week by paying tribute Liam Davey, one of our waste services team. In September last year Liam risked his own safety helping an elderly couple when he spotted their car on fire on Sketty Lane, near Singleton Hospital. Now his selfless actions have been commended by a Swansea Crown Court judge who has recommended him for an award following a trial of the man who set the vehicle on fire. In an email to us from South Wales Police, they said: “Liam is an absolute credit to Swansea Council and has portrayed you in such a positive manner as every witness we have spoken to stated ‘the council man just ran over to a burning car opening the door trying to get them out’.” Well done Liam, I could not express our appreciation of your actions better.

Our reputation among the people who’s lives we touch every day really matters and this week there’s a range of examples where your determination to go the extra mile for our communities has been noticed. At a Refugee Week exhibition at the Grand Theatre, I was touched by the kind words expressed by Ukrainian refugee Yuoana Vysotska who has made a new home here which she attributes to us. If you click on the photo below, you’ll be able to read her words. My thanks to Helen Clancy, our resettlement team and EYST for putting on such an important event.

A further example was a message I received from a Red Cross representative who praised the empathy and commitment of our housing team who this week had training to deal with distressed callers. The trainer said: “I was incredibly impressed by them and the ethos that appears to run through Swansea Council.”

We’ve also just been told our World Triathlon Paraseries Swansea event taking place this weekend has won a Gold Award from World Triathlon’s governing body for our commitment to sustainability in sports. Added to the last Friday the Hafod Copperworks won yet another accolade, this time at the Constructing Excellence Awards Wales.

My thanks to all involved in these projects and initiatives that are getting us noticed for the great work we do and please continue to share your examples with me directly.

On Tuesday I attended our Scrutiny Work Planning conference to offer oversight and thoughts to councillors who are preparing their scrutiny programme for the coming year. Some of you may be directly involved in the work of scrutiny but it might not seem relevant to wider staff. However I mention it as scrutiny is crucial and important to the whole council as it helps improve the way we organise and manage services which, in turn, enables you to support our residents.

Today I am looking forward to meeting our Early Help West Team to see for myself the great work they do supporting families, children and young people to get the best possible start in life. I’ll say a bit more about the visit and what I learned next week and if you’d like me to visit your workplace, just drop me an email.

And, finally, it won’t have escaped your notice there’s a General Election on July 4. Our elections team is doing a huge amount of work getting ready to support voters in the Swansea West and Gower seats. Since the election was called, they’ve added 4,495 new voters to the electoral register and almost 27,500 voters across the two constituencies have decided to vote by post – an increase of more than 1,500 on last time. My thanks to Huw Evans, Alison O’Hara and the elections team for their commitment and resilience.