Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

Brexit’s parallel universe

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Mysteriously, I find myself transferred back into the weird parallel universe known commonly as Brexit.  Despite uncertainty surrounding the European elections, large quantities of public cash (not this council’s!) are being committed to preparing for this potential event, which could technically be cancelled anytime up to midnight on the night before.  Should the election go ahead we will need a variety of staff in place and our electoral services team are currently seeking to fill a number of positions, if interested please apply here.

It is also worth noting that we are now in the pre-election period (from 15th April 2019) for this as of yet unconfirmed election!  We need to be careful, as do all public bodies, not to make announcements etc. that may influence the election outcome.  If in doubt, seek the advice of your manager or the legal services section.

Back in the real world I was pleased to see that sentencing took place this week in relation to the call centre scam known as ‘Wolves of Wind Street’ which I covered here previously, a prosecution brought following an investigation by the Trading Standards team.

Many teams in Swansea operate under severe pressure and that is certainly true in relation to our food hygiene service.  So again, I am pleased to hear of their successful prosecutions recently achieved.  Well done to all those involved in this vital work in an area of public protection that does not always get the recognition it deserves.

School budgets are under pressure along with all other areas of public service.  Since returning to the Council I have been pleased to see that school performance has improved or been maintained across the patch over the last few years.  This week the latest inspection results for Townhill Primary were released and confirmed good performance across all criteria.  Well done to all staff and pupils, it was particularly pleasing to note that children are in an environment where they feel both safe and valued.

When times are tough (when were they not?) it is vital that  there is a clear understanding of what management is doing, whether it be the Corporate Management Team (CMT), the leadership team or individual departmental management teams.  CMT this week agreed a revised template setting out the various responsibilities so that we can be clear who is accountable for what.  Anyone interested can access this ‘corporate grip’ report here.

Whilst I am sure budgets and money are not the most inspiring or uplifting subject for many staff, it is vital that the Council both sets and delivers financial targets.  To this end CMT this week compiled and reviewed early options and proposals leading to the next budget round.  These will be refined and discussed with cabinet over the next few weeks. The financial outlook remains challenging.  Any view that the much-hyped end of austerity could transform the position seems to me to be misplaced. If more money feeds through to local Government it is likely to come with strings attached and will not therefore alter the overall position.

Another week, another threat from Neath Port Talbot to withdraw from a regional arrangement, this time the City Deal.  It is of course for them to manage their own business.  All of us working in regional arrangements will be well aware of the conflicts, the contradictions and the sheer hard work that they entail.  So why don’t we just declare the independent state of Swansea and withdraw from them all? 

There are many reasons, the first is philosophical, a belief that we can achieve more by our collective effort.  The second is practical, Welsh Government policy is to push harder on regional working and there will shortly be legislation in place to push the agenda further and faster.  Our task is to find ways to make regional arrangements work to the benefit of our customers, clients and citizens.  We can influence the policy in positive ways but we cannot be seen to undermine it!

I never thought I would see the day when we built Council homes again.  So the start of work at Parc-y-Helyg is an important step, creating local jobs and supporting some of our apprentices.  Well done to all involved in this initiative.

On a similarly positive note, the sun is due to shine over the Easter break, but I offer no guarantees.  I hope all staff who have the opportunity of a break enjoy their time off.  But we should all thank those many staff who will be working to ensure that services to the community continue over the bank holiday.

Hub open for your ideas

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I’ve always believed that no one individual has all the good ideas and given the challenges we face as a council we need all our staff coming up with ideas to help us work better and save money.

I’m really pleased to see we’re today launching our new Ideas Hub to replace the former staff suggestion scheme. The hub gives us a new online platform for staff to put forward their ideas. All ideas will go to the relevant Head of Service who can assess the idea with the aim of responding within 10 working days. Although it’s PC-based, it gives the option for those staff without a PC to get their manager to submit an idea on their behalf. Please use the platform as often as you can because the more ideas we have the better. You can even anonymise ideas if you prefer. You can link to the hub here. Thank you to Rhys Curtis for all his work in developing the hub.

Regional working has been a big focus in the past week. Work is now under way on establishing new governance arrangements for the City Deal to ensure this major programme moves forward to the subsequent phases. Steve Thomas, the former chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association, is helping the region to put in place these arrangements and recruit a managing director, from existing funds, which should remove any conflicts of interest in the current structure. The region’s joint committee has signed-off the business case for stage one of the city centre project and we expect the UK and Welsh governments to fully sign-up in the next few weeks. Towards the end of June Scrutiny and Cabinet will be reviewing and considering the business case to allow the project to proceed.

ERW, our regional education service, this week agreed its working model for the next 12 months. I’d previously said that Neath Port Talbot were pulling out and refusing to pay their contribution, but they’ve now agreed to pay which avoids another financial issue and more importantly allows us to concentrate on delivering better outcomes for children rather than continue the distraction of internal wrangling.

It was important that Corporate Briefing (a meeting of Cabinet Members and CMT) received a report this week to establish a Swansea youth offending team following a very poor inspection report of the existing regional service. We need to get on with this change at pace and have a clear action plan for delivering this. Whilst this change is on-going we also need to support the staff to continue working with clients. The report will now move onto Cabinet.

Leadership team (CMT and Heads of Service) had their monthly meeting and discussed a range of items including staff travel, mandatory training and a new staff benefits scheme. I was particularly interested in the discussion of flexible working. We’ve been running a number of pilots in areas including Corporate Property and HR/OD and we now need to assess the outcomes. Personally, I’m all for flexibility but as we review the pilots we need to develop hard evidence that this approach is in the interests of the employee and the employer. I also want to ensure all areas of our workforce are equitably allowed and encouraged to participate, not just our office-based staff.

Lots of staff have been asking me about Phil’s progress and without going into personal details I’m pleased to say Phil has had the major part of his treatment and is now at home recovering. I’m in quite regular contact with him and I delighted in taking the mickey when Nottingham Forest recently beat his beloved Swans. Phil is really grateful for all your good wishes and, although there’s still some way to go on the road to full recovery, I’m hoping we can see him in the not too distant future.

Many of us will have visited Plantasia over the years and it’s fair to say the council realised it wasn’t reaching its full potential. Officers in Cultural Services have been working in partnership with specialist operator Parkwood to run the attraction. Officers had a tour this week and they were delighted with the new-look attraction. It has a number of new features including tree-top walks, a waterfall and new café. It opens at Easter and can become a major attraction for the city. Thank you to our officers who’ve spend many months working on this.

This week more than 300 free events have been taking place in venues across Swansea as part of our first ever Learning Festival. It’s taken a huge amount of work by our lifelong learning team to organise and coordinate but hundreds of people of all ages have d taken part. Other services delivered free learning opportunities including libraries, archives, museums, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery and adult services. Thank you to our staff involved.

Finally, I refuse to comment on Brexit any further because with each passing day I become more confused. If local government ran its business like Westminster we’d all be in special measures!

Great work

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It’s always important as Chief Executive to be able to highlight the council’s achievements and praise our staff.

Our trading standards team recently did some great work in helping to prosecute four people over a call centre scam. We’ve seen a number of these scams in Swansea which target the elderly and vulnerable. It’s never easy to bring successful prosecutions and it takes an awful lot of hard work from our staff. Thankfully on this occasion their efforts have been rewarded through the courts. It’s also been highlighted on BBC’s X-Ray programme where team leader Rhys Harries was interviewed. It’s not often that our trading standards team are in the spotlight so credit where credit is due. My thanks to the team involved, led by Nicola Murphy, and colleagues in legal.

Some of our Child and Family staff were recognised at this year’s BASW Cymru Social Work Awards. Helen Philpott was shortlisted in the Spirit of Social Work category, Lisa Collier in the Innovative Social Work category (Michelle Apthorpe collected her certificate for her and is pictured here) and the team at our Ty Nant home was shortlisted in the Social Work Team category. This is a great achievement and congratulations to all the staff involved.

Ania Negele, community coach in Cultural Services, has won a Sporting Excellence Award at the Evening Post Community Awards.  Ania was recognised following a successful year as a performance coach with Weightlifting Wales.  She is the first female Olympic Weightlifting Coach to represent Wales at a Commonwealth Games and is also the newly appointed Great Britain U20 Coach. Well done Ania.

A big thank you to two of our tree services staff who’ve been praised for stepping in after a disabled woman had been robbed in her own home. Matt Palmer and Paul Williams were in their council vehicle when they were approached by carer Jane Morgan seeking help in catching-up with the thief. Rather than allow her to go on alone, they made sure Mrs Morgan and her friend were safe.  The thief was later apprehended by police. Mrs Morgan later contacted the council to say how grateful she was for their help and kindness.

A group of our trainees have become the first to complete our inaugural waste management traineeships. They achieved WAMITAB NVQ level 2 in Sustainable Recycling Activities, run in conjunction with Gower College. Well done to everyone involved.

Last night’s Full Council meeting also recognised the recent achievements of some of our staff. Congratualtions went to Darran Kiley for being shortlisted for a St David’s Award for his bravery after he stepped in to confront a man armed with a knife in the city centre. Also recognised was the Corporate Health, Safety and Emergency Management Service who were shortlisted for a National Innovation Award in Health and Safety. There were congratulations too to the apprentices who picked up prizes at the Gower College Swansea Apprenticeship Awards. The council also collected the Apprenticeship Employer of the Year (250+ Employers). 

These are just some examples of the great work of our staff, if you know of any more please let me know.

On a less positive note you may have seen yesterday’s story about the regional Youth Offending Team being criticised following an inspection. It’s a disappointing report highlighting failings including management, governance, strategy and performance management. It’s important to stress this doesn’t reflect on individual staff who work extremely hard in very difficult circumstances. The regional arrangement covering Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and Swansea, including ABMU health board, is ending and each authority will in future go back to providing its own service. This will undoubtedly help to focus efforts, but that in itself is not the full solution. When we fully analyse the report we’ll have to put in place arrangements and actions to rectify the findings as quickly as practicable and this will be a major focus in the coming months.

As noted above, last night I attended my first Council meeting since returning. The last time I attended I was kindly presented with a Nottingham Forest shirt as a leaving gift and left with a smile. Last night was slightly different! However, there were lots of familiar faces on the political benches and although the agenda was relatively light compared to recent meetings where issues like the budget have dominated, I was particularly interested in the presentation by Save the Children who we’ll continue to work closely with.

Finally, the mess around Brexit continues and, whatever your personal view, I’m sure you’ll agree we all need clarity as soon as possible. As a council we’re continuing to prepare for the unknown. An example of this is we don’t even know if we’ll be taking part in the European elections on May 23. A huge amount of work has to go into elections, but how far down that road do you go when it may not even happen? This is just one example and the issues facing the public and business sectors are huge, so the sooner they sort it the better for all of us.

We are preparing for Brexit, whatever that means!

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The role of chief executive, like many jobs, ranges from the mundane to the interesting, but in recent days it’s certainly moved to the bizarre!

I’ve been asked to prepare for Brexit, but if anyone out there can tell me what I’m meant to be preparing for I’d be really grateful. We also recently received a small grant for the extra costs Brexit will generate, but I’m not sure what those extra costs are yet!

On a more serious note, Adam Hill and Craig Gimblett have attended various working groups set up by the Welsh Government to look at issues like loss of food and fuel supplies. But to me, this doesn’t seem entirely realistic, although more may become clearer in the next week or so.

Our £12m scheme for the Kingsway is in the news because our main contractor, Dawnus, is in difficulties. But behind these headlines there’s the human story of the workers facing financial and other implications. Given this is a Swansea firm this is clearly a concern for us. As always, when faced with a crisis, our officers have risen to the challenge and a team of people are working to deal with the consequences of Dawnus’ plight and to ensure we complete this scheme. Dawnus were also our main contractor at our new pupil referral unit at Cockett and we’re taking similar steps to ensure this scheme goes ahead. There are many people involved, but particular thanks to Martin Nicholls, Stuart Davies, Alun Thomas, Gareth Hughes and Debbie Smith.

Today we’ll be launching the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Swansea’s city status. Throughout the year we’ll be staging a programme of events and activities to celebrate everything good about our city, and today’s event is to spread the word to our stakeholders and partners who can “be part of it”. We’ve create a logo for the 50th and we’ll be using this on our website, social media, printed materials etc to help promote Swansea. We’re also adding it to our email signature so please follow this guidance and adopt the logo on your work emails.

Regional working across issues like health and education were a feature of local government life when I left in 2016 and it remains so today. I understand the current Welsh Local Government Minister, Julie James, will be introducing legislative steps this Spring to encourage further regional working. So it’s with some dismay that I see Neath Port Talbot are threatening to leave ERW, the regional education consortium, along with refusing to make their financial contributions this year or in the year of their notice. This council’s position is that we’re committed to working with others in regional structures which are resourced and governed properly so it can be seen to make a positive contribution to outcomes for children and young people. The NPT position appears to be borne out of self-interest and is in my opinion unprofessional. We’ll pursue their financial contribution so that it doesn’t impact on other partners. The reality is that regionalisation, or elements of it, is the direction of travel and we have a duty to make it work.

Corporate Management Team reviewed our corporate risk register. It seems to me the continuing loss of funding increases the probability of some of these risks occurring so we have to be clear about the mitigation we put in place.

We also considered proposals for replacing our Oracle system covering finance and HR. As always with IT we face the dilemma that the current system will become obsolete, but there are costs and resource implications when implementing the new version. CMT understood the case for replacing the system, but we’re not prepared to commit the financial or human resource until an implementation plan is devised giving assurance we can actually deliver it.

Rachel Moxey, Head of Poverty and Prevention, Gavin Evans and Damian James gave CMT a briefing on the future of our outdoor activity centres which are used by young people from across Swansea. CMT acknowledged the good work undertaken to improve the financial performance and operation of the centres which will help in the next few years. The briefing also looked at potential options for making the centres more sustainable in the longer term, but ultimately this will be a political decision and we’ll need to consider the resources needed if we were to, for example, go down the route of creating a trust.

Rachel is due to leave us to take up a new post in Pembrokeshire and Dave Howes, Director of Social Services, thanked her for her hard work and we wish her well.

Finally, I’ve received feedback in relation to my comments on the mental health strategy last week. Whilst I highlighted the service pressures and shortcomings, I should also have acknowledged the sterling work that our mental health social workers do in very challenging circumstances.

Keep your ideas coming

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Thanks to all those staff who attended the recent roadshows. More than 750 staff turned up and the fact so many expressed their views frankly to senior managers is encouraging.  What can senior managers learn from the dialogue?

Well, firstly it’s clear many staff have deep concerns about the future of local government in the face of continuing austerity.  This isn’t surprising given the continual pressure on services and insufficient funding.  It’s clear, however, there are people keen to innovate and generate ideas which will help make us a more sustainable council.

A number of staff approached me after the events with suggestions and I’m conscious some people are not comfortable raising ideas in a large forum.  CMT will discuss ideas with individual staff and there’s a staff suggestion scheme online for those with digital access, or you can give ideas to your manager. All suggestions are considered by the relevant Head of Service for implementation.

There’s also an impatience among some as to the pace of cultural change in the organisation and the need for us to focus on productivity and output rather than attendance and bureaucratic processes.  CMT will consider the feedback from the roadshows over the coming weeks and I hope we can do justice to the invaluable feedback we’ve had.

Fostering stronger relations

The Leader and I have been discussing our relationship with the Welsh Government to raise Swansea’s profile nationally.  In fairness we spend a large amount of time making the case for the city in the corridors on the Senedd and I’m impressing on the management team the need to have constructive dialogue with senior civil servants.  There’s a danger policy makers at the national level are remote from the realities of working at the coal face and the impacts of their decisions or the missed opportunities for improving services.  Unfortunately, demands of the job sometimes mean we struggle to devote enough time to this but I’ll be reinforcing the importance of building stronger relationships and presenting innovative proposals to the Welsh Government and making sure we exploit opportunities to attract more funding to this council and this city.

More Brexit sorry     

Next Tuesday sees the next milestone in the runaway train that is Brexit as the debates will rage again in the House of Commons.  It remains to be seen whether an unlikely compromise can be reached or whether we face a delay in Brexit or a further referendum.  In the meantime, we’re continuing to plan for any eventuality. On Thursday I joined the discussions at the Welsh Government EU preparedness Advisory Panel.  A lot of work has been done by the Welsh Government to support the economy, ensure continuity on the provision of health, care and education services and to mitigate the impacts of a no deal Brexit.  There’s a website explaining what’s being done.

The Council hosted a roadshow presentation by the Home Office on the EU settlement scheme to inform EU citizens living in Swansea on the application process in relation to obtaining settled status.  The roadshow was well supported with over 70 people hearing from the Home Office the steps they need to take and information and contacts they can contact to support them through the process. This also involved a Q&A session to address individual concerns and issues.  The information and presentation will be uploaded to the web along with the information from the Q&A session.

Education

Nick Williams

Our Director of Education, Nick Williams, has been off work due to ill health.  I visited Nick this week and I’m delighted to say he’s doing well and looking forward to returning when he’s fully recovered.

Council last night agreed in Nick’s absence our Head of Vulnerable Learner Service, Mark Sheridan, will be our Statutory Director of Education on an interim basis.

Mark Sheridan

A huge thank you to Mark, Helen Morgan-Rees, Brian Roles and the education team for stepping up to cover this crucially important role.  Council also considered the strong progress made in delivering education department priorities last year and noted that the priorities for this academic year:

  • Improve teaching and learning with a particular focus on reducing inequalities for the most vulnerable
  • Improve leadership and school governance
  • Work in partnership to develop a sustainable education system
  • Embed the new ALN, wellbeing and behaviour strategies
  • Ensure all learning opportunities take place in safe environments

Fitting tribute

Pupils at Pontarddulais Comprehensive School will today be commemorating Sunday’s Holocaust Memorial Day. Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 and I’m encouraged our younger generations are so involved in today’s important event.

Great effort

Many thanks to staff in our winter maintenance team who worked around the clock making sure our roads were treated with grit during the low temperatures this week. While there were some issues on the roads I’m sure the work of our highways teams helped keep these to a minimum considering the conditions.