Swansea Bay City Region

Regional projects have a big impact

January 27, 2017 by Martin Leave a Comment

Western Bay

With the push for regional collaboration likely to gain impetus after the local elections, it’s great to see one of our regional projects is having a big impact.

On Tuesday I attended the Western Bay Regional Partnership Board to discuss progress on the regional population assessment, which is a massive exercise of data gathering and interpretation in care and support that all such partnerships in Wales are required to carry out. This will help to make sure future decisions are evidence-based and that services are tailored to meet the needs of the population. It’s a crucial piece of work and it was encouraging to see it’s nearing completion and will be accessible via the Western Bay website and through our own Council website.

A lot of people have been involved in this great project, which has been a genuine partnership effort in terms of contributions. Overseen by Sara Hayes, Director of Public Health Wales at ABMU HB, data coordination led by Bridgend CBC and editorial oversight and writing led by Neath Port Talbot CBC colleagues, there has been considerable input from within our social services teams, particularly John Grenfell (Senior Information and Development Officer) and thanks to Sara Harvey and the team for all the hard work that has gone into it.

The board was established to provide high quality services that protect children and adults from harm, promote independence and deliver positive outcomes for people in Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot and Swansea. The local authorities in these areas are working closely with the ABMU Health Board and with third and independent sector partners. Its primary purpose is to provide a strategic mechanism for co-ordinating a programme of change made up of specific projects that the partners have identified as a common priority.

The agenda for the partnership board was lengthy but important and we discussed the digital strategy for ABMU, the common regional ICT programme (WCCIS) as well as updates on commissioning for care homes and young people.

I think that the Western Bay is making good progress and I fully expect that the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Finance will want to see this continue when he returns to the issue of local government reform. Robust challenge and heated debate are often signs of a maturing partnership and this was certainly the case on Tuesday.

City Deal

It’s been another busy week on the City Deal with further video-conferences and discussions with the UK Government. Yesterday Council received a presentation from the Leader on the City Deal and a report seeking authority for the Leader and I to sign on behalf of Swansea, should the Welsh and UK Governments agree the City Deal in the coming weeks.

It was an excellent debate in the chamber and Council enthusiastically gave its unanimous support. I thank all officers and members who have contributed to this, particularly Huw Mowbray and the Economic Development Team who have lived and breathed this for the last six months!

Similar Council meetings have also been held in Carmarthenshire and Neath and Port Talbot this week to agree the principles of the deal, and Pembrokeshire will meet shortly to follow suit.

eBay

The Facilities Team, supported by the Commercial and Web teams, has successfully implemented the corporate eBay account. This started when the Facilities Team requested an eBay account as they had a surplus of office furniture from Penllergaer and other satellite sites.

In the initial phase we’ve tested the financial end-to-end sales process which involves links between a PayPal account and the Council’s main financial system.

To date we’ve generated more than £10,000. The experience of using eBay has been a positive one and so the expertise gained to date will next be made available to some users across the authority to list items for resale, surplus goods and redundant office equipment. At first eBay limited our trading account to a maximum of £1500 of sales; due to our success in selling goods and receiving positive feedback from buyers the limit has continually increased and we’re now able to sell up to £10,000 worth of goods at any one time and this limit will grow as our use of this sales platform expands. It’s important to note that as well as the financial gains that have been made by using this system we have also reduced waste. This method of disposal is separate to the Council’s re-use scheme. The rules of that scheme dictate that surplus property of any description should first be considered for transfer within the Council before any other method of disposal is considered.

Director of Resources

The Appointments Committee met on Monday and agreed a shortlist of six candidates for the post of Director of Resources. The final appointment will be made by Council on January 31 following the assessment centre process.

Staff Engagement Event

We’ve almost finished reviewing the comments and ideas from the staff engagement event and I hope we’ll be able to publish them all in the coming weeks. This has taken longer than expected because there were a large number of submissions and some of the ideas require detailed consideration by the Corporate Management Team and Leadership Team.

St David’s site

Rivington Land, our development managers for the St David’s site, will be publishing a draft outline planning application next week. Providing the ideas and concepts for the site’s regeneration, the publication follows extensive consultation with residents and businesses. The submission of an outline planning application will follow by the end of March for a new development featuring shops, restaurants, an indoor arena and a new, broad pedestrian link over Oystermouth Road.

Twin town

We’ve got some visitors from our twin city of Mannheim coming to Swansea next week to find out how the Council is going about transforming our services in the wake of the unprecedented budgetary challenges we’re facing. It’s testament to all the innovative work being carried out by our staff that the visit is taking place, with public sector organisations overseas keen to find out how we’re tackling the challenge head-on here.

Drone

Ben George, from our highways and transportation team, is becoming quite the expert in the use of drones to take photos and record videos. Some of his images and footage of Swansea from different vantage points are stunning. Here’s an image of the Guildhall he took with a drone.

Pride in our standards

January 20, 2017 by Martin 3 Comments

Corporate Health Standard

A week on from gaining the Platinum Corporate Health Standard I’ve had time to digest the assessors comments and it’s something that we can all be proud of.

To get Platinum an organisation really has to excel in terms of wider corporate social responsibility and innovation across the six categories – transport, facilities management, procurement, employment and skills, capital build, and community engagement. You also have to demonstrate that sustainability runs through each of these, providing a direct link to the Well-being of Future Generations Act.

Assessors met with 15 service users and staff and were impressed with a range of projects. These include the Fforestfach Day Service which is doing great things to support adults with learning disabilities to benefit from jobs and work experience that makes a difference to them and to local communities. The service deserves great credit for seven brilliant projects ranging from the well-known NEAT teams to catering services at the Victoria Park Kiosk, the Fforestfach fruit and vegetable nursery and the Grounds Maintenance Team which supports management of wildlife and environmental habitats.

The service is celebrating its 10^th birthday this year and during that period 245 people have been supported into paid employment so it’s really fitting that their story has helped us gain the Platinum award.

The assessors points included:

Innovation and commitment
Not afraid to try something new
Passion/belief
Leadership, not just management, at all levels
Lots of creativity
People feel empowered
Engagement – from the top all the way down
Passionate
Lots of partnership work and not worried about who gets the credit
The range of organisations we work with is great
Exemplar of good practice

This award really is a great credit to all our staff so thank you very much for all your commitment, you should all be proud of what you’ve achieved!

Tanya Nash

Next Friday will be the last working day here for Tanya Nash, our Sustainable Development Team Leader. Tanya has secured a new and an important role as Head of Performance with the Future Generations Commissioner’s office.

Tanya will be a great loss to this Council. For almost 17 years she has worked tirelessly to help us embed sustainable development principles into our organisation. On that journey she’s met many challenges including a number from our former Chief Executive Jack Straw, who once memorably asked her “what’s the point in having resources if you don’t consume them?” He was of course joking but it was interesting to witness Tanya’s way of handling such scepticism with a combination of patience, logic and persuasion which has characterised her career with us.

I wish Tanya all the best for the future and thank her for the excellent contribution she’s made to both the Council and the city. I know that we will still see Tanya in her new role and I look forward to further discussion on how we can ensure that sustainability is completely embedded in our organisation.

City Deal

Hot on the heels of Sir Charles Hendry backing plans for the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, we’re hoping the UK Government will approve the Swansea Bay City Region’s City Deal bid by the end of February. If approved, it’d be hugely positive news for Swansea because of the thousands of jobs it would generate and the billions of pounds it’s worth to the local economy. A report going to Council on January 26 asks Councillors to give authority to the Leader and me to sign an “in-principle” City Deal agreement.

So far the City Deal projects have been prioritised and agreed. We’ve held a pitch session to the First Minister and effectively have Welsh Government support and approval. We’ve also held a number of meetings with the Secretary of State for Wales – including meeting reps from supporting businesses.

In terms of the next steps, we’re preparing for a pitch session to UK Ministers in two weeks and hopefully we’ll get a positive announcement towards by the end of February.

Sustainable Swansea commissioning priorities

During the recent staff roadshows we highlighted how the Sustainable Swansea programme is evolving into a cross-cutting themes approach. At this week’s Corporate Management Team away day we considered potential priority areas for the next round of commissioning reviews which will be outcome-based rather than service specific. These include outcomes for children outcomes for adults, transportation, capital programme, sustainable communities and prevention.

Once finalised the priorities will be the focus for the Sustainable Swansea Programme. Sarah Caulkin, our Chief Transformation Officer, is pulling together a transformation register of all activity as we recognise that change is going on across the organisation.

The next step will be to discuss these priorities at Leadership Team, involving Heads of Service and Directors to get support. There are also workshops planned for February where managers will be engaging staff in their own areas to discuss the priorities and to agree what can be done in individual teams and services to put them into action.

Inappropriate behaviour

You’ll know from previous blogs how strongly I feel about people treating our staff with respect. There’s no place for abusive behaviour and I’m delighted that the Innovation Community has been looking at this issue. Today I’m meeting some staff to consider how we turn their ideas into actions. It’s not an easy issue but we want to be creative in our approach so that we get the message across to the public that they should treat our staff with respect. I’ll update you as we make progress.

Well done

An independent panel has now shortlisted nominees for the annual Swansea Sports Awards, which are organised by our sport and health team. A special mention to three members of staff who’ve been shortlisted: Karen Gibbins, in our library service, and Sam Richards, in our cultural services team, both for volunteer of the year; and Adam Thomas, also from our cultural services team, for young volunteer of the year. Fingers crossed for all three who deserve recognition for their efforts.

It’s great to see more than 15 of our schools have now achieved RRS (Rights Respecting School) Level 2 – the highest level of the award granted by Unicef UK to schools that have fully embedded children’s rights in their policies, practice and ethos. YGG Llwynderw has become the first Welsh medium school in Wales to achieve the award. Assessors were full of praise for the staff and pupils and noted that it had an inclusive, warm and nurturing atmosphere which is based on an appreciation of rights and respecting one another. Congratulations to headteacher Gayle Shenton and everyone at the school.

The Guildhall is featuring in a trailer for a new movie starring Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy and Jeremy Irons. Cast and crew were here in the autumn to film scenes for ‘Their Finest’ – a film set in World War Two. My thanks to staff in marketing for facilitating the filming request.

Season’s Greetings

December 16, 2016 by Martin Leave a Comment

In case you haven’t seen it, the Leader and I have written a joint message to all staff which has been posted on Staffnet – here’s the link. We’re both grateful for the huge effort made by staff across the Council and in all our schools this year. We’ve been presented with many challenges in 2016 and staff should be proud of their achievements in these tough times. The Christmas spirit broke out in technicolour glory yesterday evening at Council with councillors and officers donning a variety of Christmas jumpers ranging from the fashionable to the completely tasteless.

Today is Christmas Jumper Day so I hope to see as many people as possible taking part, again for charity. If you send a photo to the communications team – Maxine.Bromfield@swansea.gov.uk – we’ll award a prize for the most tasteless one and put the photo in the next blog.

Together at Christmas

A free Christmas dinner with all the trimmings will be served up to homeless and vulnerable people in Swansea next Tuesday. This event has been organised by our Brangwyn Hall caterers, JR Events and Catering, led with incredible energy by their director Jessica Rice. Jess has worked tirelessly on this with the Leader and staff from across the authority and I’m grateful for the efforts of everyone who has contributed.

City regeneration

Over the last two weeks staff from the Economic Regeneration team have worked with our development partners, Rivington, to hold a number of consultation events on the proposals for the redevelopment of the St David’s shopping centre. This is a necessary and important part of the planning process recently introduced in the Planning (Wales) Act 2015. An event was held in the Meridian Tower and this was followed by a three-day consultation in the city centre. The Council website remains open for comments and there was a full day for key interest groups in the Grand Theatre on Tuesday. So far there’s an overwhelming level of overall support for the scheme. It’s difficult to gauge the relative popularity of each of the potential uses at this stage but it already appears that the arena will come out as the most popular use, closely followed by sufficient parking, the bridge and restaurants. More than 700 people have visited these events and we‘ve received more than 100 feedback cards. In response to the key question “What is your overall opinion of our initial ideas for the development?” so far 78% are in favour, 5% against and 17% are undecided.

This has been a major consultation programme and I’m grateful to Huw Mowbray, Katy Evans and the Rivington team for their hard work.

Huw and I spent Wednesday afternoon in Carmarthen on the latest of a series of video conferences with civil servants from the UK Government. We were responding to a range of technical questions about the City Deal bid, on this occasion focussing particularly on the economic outputs of the proposed City Digital District. The session went well and we hope to hear some positive news about it in the New Year.

Blaenymaes School

Last Friday I visited Blaenymaes Primary School following an invite from the head teacher Bev Phillips. Bev and I discussed the excellent progress the school has made and the recent Estyn inspection which produced a good/good judgement. The school faces many challenges but has a clear direction and excellent leadership. I then had a tour of the school accompanied by the Head Boy and a Rights Respecting School Ambassador. This close to Christmas there’s an atmosphere of anticipation in the schools I visit, with children undertaking activities related to the festive period. Blaenymaes was no exception and there was a sense of excitement bubbling all around. I also visited the excellent Flying Start provision which is delivering great outcomes in getting the younger children ready for school.

I then took the opportunity to look around the Blaenymaes/Portmead estate which I worked on many years ago. On every council estate I visit there’s work under way on the Welsh Housing Quality Standard programme and this is always an encouraging sight. Sure enough the scaffolding was up on houses in Woodford Road. The massive investment in our housing stock is making a real difference, although there’s still a lot to be done.

Budget

On Wednesday Cabinet agreed the revenue budget proposals for 2017/18 and these will now go out to consultation. The Leader proposed an amendment which related to the scrapping of burial fees for children and we’ll need to ensure this is incorporated in the final report to Cabinet following the consultation period. This follows a high profile campaign by one of our local MPs, Carolyn Harris, sadly based on personal experience.

Business Support

As part of the Business Support Programme and our commitment to modernising working practices, employees and managers are now able to undertake the following functions using Oracle (ISIS):

Appraisals.
Qualifications recording.

For managers with staff currently unable to access Self-Service we’ll continue with the current paper-based process for appraisals. The Business Support programme team is also looking at options to enable colleagues who don’t have access to a council PC and Self-Service, to access all online facilities – including payslips, eye test requests and appraisals – using a mobile device. For online appraisals, please see www.swansea.gov.uk/staffnet/appraisals for further advice and guidance.

Delegation

If you see a delegation from South Korea at the Guildhall on Wednesday I’m sure you’ll make them feel welcome. The visitors from the city of Siheung are on a fact-finding mission about the great work being done in Swansea to encourage children and adults alike to learn about enterprise and what we’re doing to reduce the percentage of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET). They’ll be meeting with officers, Cabinet Members, teachers and pupils. Their visit follows a presentation made by Cabinet Member Cllr Clive Lloyd to the First Meeting of UNESCO Global Cities Network held in Hangzhou, China last month.

Only staff Aloud

The Staff Choir sang in the Civic Foyer last Thursday – it was their first “public” performance and whilst they were very nervous, there was a large audience of colleagues and public watching and supporting them who all seemed to enjoy their performance! It’s a year since a handful of council staff formed a choir following the first ‘It’s all about you’ event last December. Since that time ‘Only Staff Aloud’ has grown in popularity and last week they were able to perform a selection of favourite Christmas songs and carols. The choir has staff from the Guildhall, Civic and Clydach and are happy to welcome newcomers – the more the merrier.

The choir is part of the Helping Hands wellbeing workshops and they practice in the Civic Centre every Thursday lunchtime. Contact Ann Smith for more information: 635031 or ann.smith@swansea.gov.uk

Farewell

Today marks the last working day for Sonia Hansford, PA to the Leader and Deputy Leader and Cabinet Support Officer. On leaving Olchfa School Sonia was employed by the former City Council as a typist in the Environment Department in July 1974. Since 2008 she has worked in the Cabinet Office.

We lose a wealth of knowledge and experience as Sonia leaves, but also a colleague with a great sense of humour who has always been willing to help and support colleagues over the years.

We have a photo of Sonia from her school days – she’s second from left, back row, in the photo below. I hope she has a long and happy retirement.

Thanks Sonia, you’ll be missed by many.

Another colleague who’s leaving is Kim Green, an administration officer in the housing service, after a remarkable 42 years with the council. Kim started work as a 17-year-old in the housing general office on Orchard Street in 1974. I wish her a long and happy retirement!

Thanks and congratulations

Thanks to staff in water safety for their help with the on-going Royal Life Saving Society UK ‘Don’t Drink and Drown’ campaign. As part of the partnership campaign leaflets have been delivered to university accommodation sites across the city, reminding people of the dangers of drinking too much alcohol close to areas of water. An event is also taking place at Castle Square tomorrow evening for pub and club-goers. Also thanks to staff in community safety for their work alongside South Wales Police in putting Christmas cards together with crime prevention tips.

Well done to our Trading Standards Team for their efforts to remove £1 million of counterfeit goods from the streets recently. This goes a long way towards our aims of protecting consumers.

Staff survey offers largely encouraging feedback

November 18, 2016 by Martin Leave a Comment

Staff survey

We’ve just received the initial results from this year’s staff survey and I’m pleased to say most of the issues are moving in the right direction.

Here are some headlines:

The overall response rate was 2% higher than last year and it’s encouraging to see the number of hard copy responses had more than doubled from last year, hopefully indicating that staff working in remote sites had a greater input than ever before.

No area performed worse than last year and in many areas staff responses were much more positive. For instance, awareness of safeguarding has improved significantly since the last survey which is really good news. The results indicate there’s still work to be done in this area but that we’re heading in the right direction.

The experiences of bullying and harassment have dropped compared to last year, but almost 60% of those who had experienced it did not report it. We need to understand why this is the case and I’ll be asking for views on this.

The full results are available on Staffnet by following this link www.swansea.gov.uk/staffnet/staffsurvey and I‘ve asked for the survey to be sent to the Innovation Community for analysis and observations.

Its_all_about_you_2_logo I’m hoping we’ll be able to use these results at the It’s All About You 2 event at the Marriott Hotel next week which I hope many of you will be able to attend.

In the meantime, I’ve asked CMT members to consider the results relating to their service areas and develop plans to address those areas which need improving.

CMT away day

There was a full agenda for the CMT away day on Wednesday this week. We started with a presentation on city centre funding from Phil Holmes and Huw Mowbray which set out the proposals for the next decade. Securing the funding will be challenging but doing nothing is not an option and further reports will now be brought to Cabinet and Council to progress this corporate priority.

Also on the agenda was a 178-page report on the Leading Learners strategy for the education service presented by our Chief Education Officer, Lindsay Harvey. The strategy sets out in detail the aims, outcomes and work plan for the future and this was debated at some length, given that pupil attainment is another of our key corporate priorities. The strategic aims focus on three areas: empowering schools, transforming central education services and improving learning environments.

CMT members emphasised the need to have clear links to other corporate priorities, particularly poverty, the economy and safeguarding, and supported the report which will now be discussed with the Cabinet and hopefully be formally endorsed.

Thanks to Lindsay and his team in education for this mammoth piece of work.

Budget

Our budget discussions have all but drawn to a close for now with the recent challenge sessions going well. It’s meant we’ve been able to propose a series of budget reductions to go to Cabinet on December 12. Following that we’ll be launching a public consultation and holding staff roadshows to get feedback on the proposals. Then in February we’ll report back on the feedback and Cabinet and Council will discuss the 2017/18 budget proposals. These discussions are never easy so thank you to everyone involved so far.

Spike

IMG-20161118-WA0000 Next Friday will be the last working day for Mike Davies in Unison, better known to the rest of us as Spike. Spike began work with us in March 1979 as a clerical officer with the City Treasurer’s Officer (Swansea City Council). He held a variety of posts in the Treasurer’s department, reaching senior officer level rapidly through a series of promotions. In May 2001 he started his Unison duties one day per week and in June 2004 he was seconded to Unison on a full-time basis. This was originally intended for a year but it was extended annually and he has remained in the post of Branch Secretary up until his last day with us! Spike and I have had numerous meetings and discussions since he took up his Unison duties. These have often involved difficult and contentious workforce issues and on many occasions management and the trade union did not see eye to eye. Throughout these negotiations and discussions Spike conducted himself professionally and appropriately, representing his members passionately and with great integrity. He has become an institution in the council and will be sorely missed by me and many others. I will, however, inevitably bump into him in future given our common love of the Swans and the Brunswick Inn. I wish him all the best for the future. He will be having his leaving do at the Bay View from 5.30pm on November 25 and all are invited.

Safeguarding

This week has been National Safeguarding Week and teams across the council have been showing their support online and attending events aimed at improving practice and developing networks. More than half our staff have done the mandatory safeguarding training and, if you’ve not done yours, I’d urge you to participate soon.

Community spirit

Our libraries are at the heart of our communities. A great example of this recently saw a man come into Morriston Library with an old paper copy of his CV. We work in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions Communities for Work team and a staff member was on hand to help him update his CV on a computer. His CV was sent to employers and he’s now been offered a job. It just goes to show the support our libraries and partnerships provide.

Christmas cheer

Waterfront Winterland will return to Museum Park in the grounds of the National Waterfront Museum from this evening, so my thanks to staff in events and marketing for its organisation and promotion. The Admiral ice rink, a children’s ice rink, Santa’s grotto and a big wheel all again feature.

A Christmas Market on Oxford Street and Santa’s grotto on Portland Street will be running from Thursday (November 24) until December 21. Thanks to staff in our city centre team for their work in helping arrange these attractions.

City centre

Representatives from Swansea’s business community will be at an event at Meridian Quay on Monday, where they’ll be updated on progress of plans to redevelop the St David’s site. Consultation with businesses and residents will follow over coming weeks as Rivington Land, the company we’ve appointed to manage the regeneration of the site, head towards the submission of an outline planning application in March.

Finally, you may have recently read about US basketball superstar Steve Nash’s links with Swansea. Our tourism team are making the most of these links by sending Steve a basketball-themed info-graphic on Twitter, encouraging him to visit Swansea Bay in future. A great idea!

Bridging the budget gap

November 11, 2016 by Martin Leave a Comment

Directors and Cabinet have been locked in budget discussions this week as we look to bridge our £14m budget gap.

We’re trying to do it in a way that minimises disruption to services and protects jobs, but this is obviously going to be tricky given the size of the savings and previous budget reductions. By the end of today we should have a series of proposals which will form the basis of consultation with staff, councillors, trade unions and the public. Our budget proposals will reflect our corporate priorities, particularly education and social care. The discussions have been quite challenging and a huge amount of work has been done to generate savings ideas, many of which have come from individual employees. They also include ideas that are cross-cutting which shows we are moving away from the silo approach. The budget proposals are due to go to Cabinet on December 12 so the report will be published in early December. We have a series of staff roadshows planned and I’d encourage everyone to attend so that we can update you on the budget and Sustainable Swansea.

Big deal

Another big issue for me this week has been the City Deal. Yesterday the Leader and I went to Cardiff with colleagues from the City Region to make a pitch for the Swansea Bay City Deal to First Minister Carwyn Jones. He was joined by Cabinet colleagues Mark Drakeford (Finance and Local Government) and Ken Skates (Economy and Infrastructure). Our Leader, Rob Stewart, made the presentation, clearly and confidently setting out the reasons why the Welsh Government should support the bid, click here for details. This was followed by 90 minutes of in-depth challenge from the assembly members present. The purpose of the pitch was to explain the challenges and ambitions facing South West Wales and to seek Welsh Government support for the 11 regional projects over the next 20 years. The next step in the coming weeks will be a similar exercise with the UK government in London. Following that we’d hope for an announcement prior to Christmas. Financial support from both governments is essential.

Remembrance

Today at 11am we’ll be observing the two-minute silence to remember the sacrifices of our armed services down the years and in the present day. Please observe the occasion. My thanks also to the team organising Silence in the Square in Castle Square this morning.

Coming to the rescue

We often say our employees go the extra mile, but this week three members of staff performed heroics. Tim Orrell and Ellen Richards, who work in in the Nature Conservation Team, were on the second floor of the Civic Centre when they saw a lady in distress on the beach. She had a suspected broken ankle, having been knocked over by a dog. They realised she was getting cold so went and got a space blanket to try and keep her warm. The ambulance couldn’t reach the lady so they contacted their colleague Sean Hathaway, who had access to a 4×4 truck, and he took the lady from the beach to the ambulance. My thanks to Tim, Ellen and Sean for all their care and efforts.

Child care

We’ve been chosen as one of six trial areas for a new Welsh Government pilot initiative that aims to provide families with 30 hours of early years education and childcare a week. We’ve been chosen because of our impressive record of innovation in this area of practice which is already transforming education attainment opportunities among families in some of our city’s most deprived areas. This kind of recognition is great for our reputation as a forward-looking local authority and my thanks go to the teams involved and particularly to Sian Bingham who co-ordinated the bid.

Hillary is a Jack!

Hillary Clinton may not be heading to the White House but that hasn’t stopped our archives team tracing her Swansea family tree. Their research shows that her great-great grandfather, Edwin Howell, worked for a decade in the metal industries of South Wales in the 1870s – five years of which were spent in the Landore area of Swansea. One of Edwin’s sons, Benjamin Alfred Howell – Hillary’s great-great uncle – was born in Landore in 1872 in an area called Maesydd, according to his birth certificate, which archivists estimate to be the area around Mysydd Road in Swansea. At the moment there appears to be no Swansea connection with Mr Trump.

Regeneration latest

There’s been progress this week on our regeneration plans for the Civic Centre and St David’s development sites. We’ve now advertised for an indoor arena operator for the St David’s site, with an outline planning application for the overall scheme set for submission in March next year. We’re also in discussions with Swansea University and Trebor Developments, the company we’ve appointed to manage the regeneration of the Civic Centre site, about an interactive science gallery that could, along with a public aquarium, form part of the hydro hub planned for the site. This gallery would present examples of cutting-edge Swansea University research through hands-on exhibits. I’ll continue to keep you updated.

The Leader and Tracey McNulty, our head of cultural services, were at the restored and redeveloped Glynn Vivian Art Gallery yesterday for a Ministerial visit. Ken Skates, the Welsh Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, was hugely impressed with the attraction, which has welcomed more than 10,000 visitors since re-opening on October 15. Well done to everyone involved.

Give your vote

A fantastic community project that helps people with learning disabilities needs your help. Staff in our day services team have been raising money for the past 18 months for the Trewarren garden project. It now features in the Aviva Community Fund awards which provides money to those projects with the highest number of votes. To learn more about the project and to vote please follow this link

Nominations are now open for the Swansea Sports Awards 2016, being run by our sport and health team. Visit this link to get your nominations in to recognise outstanding sporting achievements made by both our local and high profile sportspeople this year.