As many of you will know our highways and traffic teams have been dealing with a major flooding incident at Cwmbwrla roundabout. Since last weekend’s heavy rainfall, they’ve been working round the clock to manage what is a highly complex situation. I want to thank them, other council staff who have been drawn in to support their work and partner organisations like Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, South Wales Police and Mid and West Wales Fire Service. As always, the resilience and commitment of our staff is at its best when our residents need us most. I also want to tackle one or two myths you might have seen on social media about the situation. We believe the problem is with a culvert which is blocked on private land and can’t currently be accessed. This means the only way to deal with the water in the short term is to pump away as much of it as we can. Alongside our partners, our priority is to protect the public, their property and keep our roads as open as much as possible until the culvert can be accessed and repaired. I’ll keep you posted and if you live, work or use roads in the area please keep an eye on our social media for updates. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and support.
This week I was pleased to attend two events that celebrate the role of unsung heroes who rarely get the recognition from the wider community that they deserve. Yesterday, alongside colleagues in the West Glamorgan Carers Partnership, we hosted the annual Unpaid Carers Event at Swansea.com Stadium to thank them for their work, share information, and offer networking opportunities. The day before our community development team hosted a city-wide Volunteers Recognition Day at Brangwyn Hall to thank them for their dedication and commitment over the last year. It’s no exaggeration to say that without unpaid carers and volunteers our public services would struggle to deliver and our communities would be much poorer. My thanks to them and to the teams who organised these two important events.
Yesterday Cabinet saw two reports about our performance in the first quarter of the financial year. On our financial position Cabinet was told we are well-placed to manage the challenges we face in the year ahead of rising demand for services and cost pressures. We will, of course, need to deliver on our savings targets to achieve break-even by the end of the year. Our performance monitoring report also offered room for optimism. While there remain significant challenges in some areas, most of our services are delivering or exceeding our expectations and that’s down to you, so a huge thanks from me.
Congratulations to our car parks team for being named Britain’s best at what they do in this year’s British Parking Awards. They were the only Welsh council shortlisted, and they picked up the award for best back office services as well as the Team of the Year prize, the event’s main award.
Also well done to our tackling poverty and enabling communities team for earning the praise of their peers at this year’s APSE awards. Although they didn’t win, it is a significant achievement to be finalists for two awards at such a prestigious occasion.
Leave a Reply