City centre – Page 2

Penblwydd hapus

January 12, 2018 by Martin Leave a Comment

Today marks the first anniversary of the publication of Sir Charles Hendry’s report on the future of tidal lagoon energy with the clear recommendation to the Government to get on with the Swansea tidal lagoon project. I acknowledge that the lagoon doesn’t have 100% support but the vast majority of people I’ve spoken to are in favour of it and it has cross-party support in Council.

We’ll continue to exert as much pressure as we can to secure this project and the massive economic boost it’d bring to the city and the region. This week we had a Love the Lagoon birthday cake made to mark the anniversary. It’s part of our campaign and was shared with business leaders and visitors to Swansea Market. We also sent first birthday cards to the Prime Minister, Welsh Secretary and Business Secretary as a friendly nudge for them to make a decision.

You may have seen this week that the First Minister has now waded in to the debate with an offer of substantial financial support from the Welsh Government. It remains to be seen whether this will help unblock the project at UK Government level, but I know that the pressure of our Love the Lagoon campaign has been felt in Cardiff and London so thanks to all who‘ve joined with it.

On Monday I attended our Scrutiny Programme Committee along with the Leader where the subject of the lagoon was raised once again. The committee heard from the Leader about progress on a range of issues from City Deal and the broader regeneration programme to the work of the Public Services Board and our corporate priorities. Scrutiny is an essential function of local government and we responded to a range of challenging and important questions. The report is available here. During the meeting we noted that Greg Clark, the current Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, had retained his post in the UK Government Cabinet reshuffle. During our recent meeting with him he said a decision would be made “shortly” so we hope he keeps to his word and we can leave the second birthday candle firmly in the drawer.

Homelessness

This week saw the publication of the Wales Audit Office report into how councils are managing homelessness. The report presents a mixed picture on performance but acknowledges that many of the causation factors are outside the control of councils and Welsh Government. For example there’s a general concern over the impact of welfare reform and a growth in the numbers of people finding themselves without a home.

Auditor General, Huw Vaughan-Thomas said: “My report today highlights that Local Authorities continue to focus on managing people in crisis rather than stopping them getting into crisis in the first place. To truly prevent homelessness public bodies need to take a long-term view and work with other organisations to really tackle the issues that cause homelessness. This requires a focus on, for example, better educational attainment, access to employment, well planned transition when leaving care and access to welfare benefits.”

We’re praised in the report for work on preventing homelessness through the creative use of Supporting People funding, its work with private landlords and its strategic approach to prevention. This Council has led the way in Wales on tackling homelessness for many years and I was proud to read the comments of the auditor. My thanks go to all those who work in this important and essential service area.

Sharing Information

On Tuesday I met with the Assistant Police and Crime Commissioner to discuss the effectiveness of information sharing protocols with housing following the introduction of new arrangements last year. It’s clear our council is also leading the way nationally on this initiative and although there are still some issues to resolve this is having an impact on community safety for our housing estates. Thanks to Dave Thomas and all in the housing team who’ve helped to make this a success.

Congratulations

The ‘Jig-so’ project has been shortlisted for prestigious British Journal of Midwifery Awards. It’s a Swansea-wide team of midwives, nursery nurses, family facilitators and early language development workers. Well done to all involved and let’s hope the team get the right result on the night.

Our corporate building and property services team is carrying out works at council homes to help tenants save money on their heating bills. The team has taken on more staff to do the work in-house, leading to a 25% increase in turnover compared to 2016/17. This will help us reach the Welsh Housing Quality Standard, so well done to all staff involved.

Staff in a range of services have joined forces with businesses and organisations to help improve the appearance of St Phillips Community Centre in Sandfields. This will improve things for thousands of people who use the community centre every year, so my thanks to all involved.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

December 28, 2017 by Martin Leave a Comment

My last blog of the 2017 is a chance to reflect on some of the major issues of the past year and to look ahead to our challenges in 2018.

We started the year in fine style by being awarded the Platinum Corporate Health Standard after excelling in corporate social responsibility and innovation. January also saw the Hendry Review say the Tidal Lagoon was a “no regrets” policy. Almost a year on we’re still waiting for a government decision!

The Welsh Government unveiled its ‘White Paper: Reforming Local Government: Resilient and Renewed’ including regionalised services and electoral reform.

Spring brought the City Deal signing which promises a £1.3bn transformation of our economy and we built on our track record of investing in young people by launching our Apprentice Strategy – more than 170 apprentices have come through since 2003.

April showed there were no fools in our waste team when they cleaned up at the IESE (Improvement and Efficiency South East) Awards.

In May we stood united with Manchester following the horrific terror attack which served as another reminder that we all have to be vigilant, particularly at our major events. And our elections team and volunteers pulled out all the stops to deliver yet another election with huge effort but minimum fuss.

The tragic events of Grenfell Tower threw the spotlight on high-rise flats across the UK and our Housing and Corporate Buildings teams led the way in Wales, acting quickly and professionally to reassure our residents. Another election, this time the General, once again saw our staff pull-out all the stops.

The summer brought a mixed bag of news – I was delighted to be permanently appointed Chief Executive and for us to be shortlisted for City of Culture. But this delight was dampened with the shelving of the rail electrification to Swansea and the worrying budget indications from the Government.

The annual local government “league tables” in September showed that despite budget cuts and service pressures:

29% of all our performance indicators were in the top quartile, up from 17% in 2014/15
A reduction in lower quartile PIs from 22% to 14%.
We’re ranked 9^thamong all 22 councils, up from 15^th last year. Considering we are an urban authority this is a major achievement.

We launched our Love the Lagoon campaign to unite the community in telling the Government we want and need the project.

October is always a highlight for me because of the High 5 Awards and this year a record number of young people were recognised. Autumn also sees the real work on our budget get under way and Corporate Management Team and Cabinet were locked in meetings to plug the budget gap due to government cuts. Each year is getting more difficult.

November was a month for lobbying in London when we took both our City of Culture and Love the Lagoon campaigns to Westminster. Closer to home our Christmas Parade was met with great feedback from the public.

Despite a fantastic effort, our City of Culture bid fell at the final hurdle in December. Since then we’ve had encouraging talks with the Welsh Government on how we can take culture forward. Our annual staff survey showed the vast majority of areas improving. However, there’s more work to do, particularly on appraisals. And just before the Christmas break I was delighted to hear primary school attendance was 95% for the 2017-2018 academic year, compared to 94.9% for each of the two previous years. The five-year trend since 2011-2012 has an improvement of 2% which is the highest rate of improvement in Wales. Congratulations to all our school and education staff for this impressive result.

So what does 2018 have in store for us? Hopefully a positive decision on the Tidal Lagoon with the clock running at 350 days since the Hendry Review recommended the government gets on with it. We’ll see some significant developments taking place around the Arena and Kingsway sites as the city centre regeneration gathers pace. This will involve major changes to the city centre road network and the development of the infrastructure for a Smart City.

I suspect we‘ll see a restatement of the Welsh Government approach on local government reform, possibly with greater emphasis on mandation unless the pace of collaboration between councils increases.

We’ll set a budget following the consultation process and hopefully continue to deliver excellent services in increasingly difficult circumstances. Our work on modernising and transforming the Council will continue, increasing our agile, digital and commercialism programmes to help us to combat future cuts in the revenue budget.

Above all I hope 2018 will be a healthy and happy year for you and for your families and I want to thank you once again for the fantastic work during 2017.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Just another manic Monday

November 24, 2017 by Martin 2 Comments

I spent Monday in London lobbying for the tidal lagoon and the UK City of Culture 2021.

The Leader and Deputy Leader joined me, along with Nigel Short, owner of Penderyn Whisky. They delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street and took our giant postcard to the Wales Office in Whitehall.

It marked the end of the current phase of our Love the Lagoon campaign and was timed to drive the message home before the Chancellor’s budget speech. We hope the lagoon will be included in the UK Industrial Strategy when it’s unveiled soon.

We then went to the House of Commons for the UK City of Culture reception.

It was a well-attended event with speeches from Geraint Davies MP and our Leader, Rob Stewart. Alun Cairns, the Welsh Secretary, also spoke in support of our bid.

I met one of our cultural champions, Sir Peter Blake, best known, rather unfairly, for the design of the Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band LP cover.

His exhibition of illustrations for Under Milk Wood kicked-off our Dylan Thomas centenary events in 2014. His support is greatly appreciated.

“Dying to work” charter

We’ve signed a workers’ charter to provide further support to staff facing terminal illness. We already support key elements of the charter, including ensuring employees with a terminal illness have access to appropriate counselling and financial advice, and that we deal with terminal illness in a sensitive and supportive way.

Thanks to all the councillors, officers and trade unions who’ve been involved.

Leading the way

Congratulations to everyone involved in Monday’s event to celebrate our role in placing children’s rights at the heart of education. Schools have taken part in the UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools initiative and more than 48,000 children and young people, 2,050 teaching staff and 1,320 non-teaching staff have played their part.

We’re the first council in the UK to embed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) at the heart of everything we do and that’s real cause for celebration.

Linked to this, the #IAMME Young People’s group collected their prestigious Diana Award, and were a credit to our looked after children. The awards’ roll of honour now states: “#Iamme are an incredible group of young people who have made a significant contribution to ensuring that the voice of looked after children is represented.” This is a fantastic achievement and I’m very proud!

Pontlliw Primary School

During a visit to Pontlliw Primary school I was delighted to see a clear focus on the STEMM subjects and a real commitment to promote science. The school will be visiting Valencia as part of the ERASMUS project to see how science and technology is taught elsewhere. Despite the uncertainty over Brexit and its impact on ERASMUS, I hope these exchanges continue. Thanks to headteacher Alison Norman, her team and the pupils for the warm welcome and I hope you bring back some great ideas from Valencia.

Well-being

In 2016, Swansea’s Public Services Board (PSB) started a conversation about well-being in the local area. People told us Swansea’s a great place to live but we need to work together to make sure everyone can live well, benefit from and be proud of Swansea.

Based on this we’ve developed a draft Local Well-being Plan, but we need your views to make sure we’ve got it right. I hope you can let us have your views by completing the survey here.

Christmas

I went to the fantastic Christmas Parade in the city centre along with 40,000 other people – the biggest crowd we’ve had at the lights switch-on. Congratulations to our events team for staging a successful parade and for getting Waterfront Winterland open on time.

Our cleansing team was on the case straight after the event – ensuring the city centre was back to normal for the start of the week.

We’ve already had loads of enquiries from people and organisations wanting to take part in next year’s parade and that speaks volumes. Thanks and congratulations to the many staff involved from all the departments who contributed.

Children in Need

Fund-raising events for Children in Need were held across the council. Just one example saw the Highways and Transportation team at Clydach raise £88 by selling cakes and dressing down.

Well done to all and here’s a picture of Lee O’Hara entering into the dressing down with gusto!

White Ribbon

A White Ribbon Day event will be held at Swansea’s Domestic Abuse One Stop Shop today as part of a national campaign. We’re working with Swansea Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Partnership to spread the message that domestic abuse and violence are unacceptable. You’ll find further information about the campaign here.

Sad loss

Grenville Phillips, Honorary Alderman and former Lord Mayor of Swansea, has passed away. Grenville was also Honorary Burgermeister of Mannheim and founder of the Portmead and Blaenymaes Community Centre. I worked alongside him as he strove to improve the lives of his constituents in the Penderry ward.

He was a deeply committed and fair politician and I‘ll always be grateful for his unwavering support, particularly through the challenging PRC homes project which saw the demolition and redevelopment of a large part of the Blaenymaes and Portmead estate.

London Calling

November 17, 2017 by Martin 2 Comments

Next week officers and councillors are in London to continue two important campaigns; the Tidal Lagoon and the City of Culture.

Hopefully you’ll have seen our giant postcard that’s been signed by hundreds of lagoon supporters. We’ll be delivering it to the Wales Office in Whitehall on Monday morning with a clear message to the Chancellor to announce its approval in his Autumn Statement. A few hours later we’ll be handing in a letter to the Prime Minister signed by more than 110 leading businesses calling for the lagoon’s go ahead. The campaign has been magnificent, driven by our Communications team and supported by a huge number of staff across the organisation. I’m grateful to every one of you. The highlight of the campaign for me has been the videos from some of our schools. Click on the attached link to see examples of their art submissions.

We’ll then be heading to the House of Commons to attend a City of Culture bid reception to win over the hearts and minds of MPs and to demonstrate what becoming the UK City of Culture 2021 would mean for Swansea. We’re entering the last two weeks of this campaign so I’d urge everyone who supports the bid to express themselves through our social media platforms as we head for the line in Hull on December 8.

The Sky’s the limit

We’re anxiously awaiting the decision of board of the Skyline Luge organisation on the location of their next project. I mentioned this in my blog on October 27. Following the visit by Skyline New Zealand our team of officers and members have been pulling out all the stops to attract this game-changing attraction. Whatever the outcome the team couldn’t have tried harder and deserve a big vote of thanks for their efforts. Fingers crossed!

Liberty Stadium

Cabinet this week approved the terms of an agreement with Swansea City FC for new lease arrangements for the Liberty Stadium. The report can be found here. Over the last few years the over-complicated existing arrangements have become increasingly outdated. The agreement will see a guaranteed rental income and, subject to continued Premier League status, a share in any naming rights deal the club secures. The agreement will also allow the Ospreys continued playing rights and the provision of a number of 3G pitches for the Council. My thanks to those involved in securing this deal.

School visits

On Tuesday I went to Penllergaer Primary School to meet the head teacher, Jayne Woolcock. We discussed a range of topics including her role as challenge adviser, the progress of the school improvement consortium (ERW) and the issues facing the Council and the school. Last year the school became the only school in Wales to be awarded Associate School status by the Royal Society so I was particularly interested in the work the school’s doing in relation to STEMM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics and medicine). I’m hoping we can link with Swansea University’s Soapbox Science programme which I mentioned in my July 7^th blog. The school is already working closely with the university in a partnership which sees pupils regularly going to the second campus to dig deep into science activities like using a scanning electron microscope. I also met Kelly Thomas, the school’s Science Leader, who recently won a national Outstanding Teacher Award at the Primary Science Teaching Trust 2017 Awards for her innovative approach to teaching science, encouraging inquisitive, critical thinking among pupils. Well done Kelly.

Congratulations and thanks

This week witnessed the start of the transformational changes along the Kingsway, a critical piece in the city centre jigsaw. Our Highways team have done a great job in implementing the traffic changes, introducing a temporary roundabout along with a number of other changes. They had to do this whilst ‘juggling’ the traffic which was no mean feat and was delivered with minimum disruption. We’ll be removing buses from the Metro track along with the temporary pedestrian barrier on the central reserve. We’re also putting in new bus stops and removing and planting trees. Thanks to all involved.

I was delighted to hear that all our Band B schools bids to Welsh Government have been successful. This means we’ll see an unprecedented capital investment in our schools estate over the coming years. Thanks and congratulations to all the staff and councillors involved in preparing our submissions.

Our Beyond Bricks and Mortar Community Benefit policy has won the Go Awards Wales “Go Procurement Innovation/ Initiative award” against 10 other entries. This regional award follows the national award we won last March at Go Awards UK for “Best Employment Initiative”. We automatically go into the national awards taking place in Manchester in April. Congratulations to our Beyond Bricks and Mortar team who have every reason to be proud of their achievements.

You may have seen DIY SOS on BBC1 on Wednesday, which was all about the construction of a new base for The Roots Foundation in Fforestfach. Our staff in teams including building, parks, highways, building regulations, planning and social services were instrumental in helping support this Children in Need project, so my thanks to all involved. And I know many staff will be raising funds today for Children in Need. Thank you for all your efforts.

Christmas in Swansea starts today with the opening of the Christmas Market on Oxford Street and the Waterfront Winterland at Museum Park. With the Christmas Parade in the city centre on Sunday, I’d like to thank all staff involved in organising these events. Head to www.swanseachristmas.com for more information.

Reassurance on our high-rise blocks

July 7, 2017 by Martin Leave a Comment

Update on our high rise blocks

This week we continued our work on tenant reassurance at our high rise blocks. It’s been a difficult week, starting on Saturday morning when I received notification that four blocks had failed the UK Government tests. By mid-morning on Sunday our magnificent staff had implemented all the required measures and more and the Housing team had delivered reassurance messages to all 672 tenants. This was a massive piece of work and I’m indebted to staff in Housing, Corporate Building and Communications for their brilliant response.

Four of our high-rise buildings – three at Clyne Court and Jeffreys Court – contain Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) and were tested at the request of the Welsh Government. Our other seven sites have not been tested because they do not contain ACM. The tests failed and we’ve been seeking further advice from the Welsh and UK Governments. So far all cladding tested from buildings in England and Wales have failed the tests.

However, we were advised on Tuesday that additional tests on the full system that we’ve been asking for over the last fortnight had been carried out by BRE on panels that are identical to the ones used in Swansea.

These additional tests – known as BR 135 – confirm the panels are fully compliant with building regulations. This provides further reassurance to tenants about the safety of their homes because it confirms the cladding will not contribute to the spread of a fire should there be one.

We’ve communicated this to our tenants and we’ve shared the information with Welsh Government as we hope they’ll confirm our understanding of the situation as soon as possible in order that tenants are fully reassured.

And yesterday there were more developments. Firstly, the Welsh Government requested a review of school buildings before the end of term. And then the UK Government finally announced new testing of the entire cladding system – something we’ve requested for the past two weeks.

Leadership Team

At Leadership Team Directors and Heads of Service considered ways of increasing the number of staff who reply to our annual staff survey. This’ll be the fourth year we’ve done the survey and we want as many staff as possible to complete it. We have to use different methods to reach different staff, especially those who don’t have access to IT in work. If you have any ideas please let me know.

We also had a demo of the new contact portal that we’ll be introducing to our switchboard. Staff can use voice-activation when using the switchboard from September and then we’ll roll it out for the public. Other councils and organisations use it successfully and with more than 20,000 calls into our switchboard every month this should help make us more efficient in dealing with staff and customer calls.

Poverty Forum

Reducing poverty is one of the five corporate objectives and we can use our power as an employer, developer, landlord and investor to achieve this. Opportunities like Welsh Housing Quality Standard, City Deal and tidal lagoon don’t come round every day so we must exploit them to the full.

This week I chaired a meeting of the Poverty Forum Network, an internal officer group, to take stock on where we are, think about how we will monitor progress and agree some key projects to work on.

The recently revised poverty strategy and delivery plan and scrutiny work makes this the right time to reignite the corporate approach through the poverty forum and I’m going to put my personal time and commitment into this and I’d like all staff to do the same.

Congratulations and thanks

The Wales Airshow last weekend was the best yet with 250,000 people enjoying the event. We owe a huge vote of thanks to all those involved in the logistics of this event. Our traffic team managed the required road closures, the special events team were a model of efficiency as were all the staff and volunteers who helped with running the event and clearing up afterwards. The Council even got a round of applause at the end! I’m very proud of all who contributed because it is a massive challenge to deliver this event. Well done all.

I’m delighted the city centre has retained its prestigious Purple Flag status. It was first awarded the status in 2015 in recognition of the excellence of its evening and night-time economy.

Rhys Harries in our Trading Standards Team received the Special Individual Achievement Award at the Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG) Awards. Rhys was instrumental in an investigation that resulted in £1 million of counterfeit goods being seized.

Events

Following on from the Airshow, there’s a lot happening in the next few weeks. The Soapbox Science returns to the city centre on Saturday to promote cutting edge research and encourage children to take an interest in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) subjects.

On Sunday the ‘Eid in the Park’ event is being hosted by Swansea University in Abbey Meadow on the Singleton Campus from 11.30am to 4.30pm. It’s a great family event.

Swansea’s International Dance Festival, Dance Days, also returns this weekend with a mix of free dance performance for everyone.

And the annual Swansea Beach Soccer Festival returns to Swansea Bay on Saturday, July 8 to promote sport and the area as a hub for sport and activity.