Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

Pleasing performance

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Our latest annual performance results show we’re continuing to improve in our priority areas and national targets. We all know how tough the local government climate is with reduced budgets and growing demands, but our staff are continuing to make huge efforts to improve services for people.

We’ll be reporting the outturn to councillors in the coming weeks but in terms of our five Corporate Priorities, here’s a few highlights from the report:

  • Safeguarding people from harm – our preventative care model in Adult Services is having a positive impact and we’re continuing to make progress in Children’s Services, despite a higher than expected level of demand.
  • Improving education and skills – the picture is improving and we’ve had our best attendance levels and a number of pleasing school inspections. We’ll be working closely with schools to bring further improvements.
  • Transforming our economy and infrastructure – some major projects are moving forward, such as the Digital Arena. We’re providing training and employment via our Bricks and Mortar scheme and we’re above target in dealing with planning applications.
  • Tackling poverty – there’s progress through a range of initiatives and this’ll be further supported by our new Poverty Strategy.
  • Transformation and future council development – our ambitious changes continue through channel shift to online, completing and implementing 15 out of 17 Commissioning Reviews, although more work is needed on reducing sickness absence and managing our budgets.

Overall, the performance is really pleasing and, whilst there’s always more to be done, I and Corporate Management Team are delighted with the efforts of staff and I’d like to thank you for everything you do. The report will now go through the political cycle and the details will be published.

New Cabinet

Leader Rob Stewart has unveiled a new Cabinet structure to tackle the council’s priorities and the challenges we face.  The structure was agreed at yesterday’s Annual Council Meeting:

  • Rob Stewart – Economy and Strategy (Leader)
  • Clive Lloyd – Business Transformation and Performance (Deputy Leader)
  • David Hopkins – Delivery
  • Mark Child – Care, Health and Ageing Well
  • Jen Raynor – Education Improvement, Learning and Skills
  • Robert Francis-Davies – Investment, Regeneration and Tourism
  • Andrea Lewis – Homes and Energy
  • Mark Thomas – Environment and Infrastructure Management
  • Elliott King – Children’s Services Early Years
  • Will Evans – Children’s Services Young People
  • June Burtonshaw – Better Communities Place
  • Mary Sherwood – Better Communities People

Further details of individual Cabinet portfolios are here and information on committees will be updated later today.

Children’s Services Inspection

We were notified this week that the Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) will undertake an inspection of our Children’s Services in July. The inspection will focus on the effectiveness of services and arrangements to help and protect children and their families and will particularly consider the experience and progress of looked after children and care leavers including the quality of preventative interventions, decision-making, care and support and pathway planning.  The inspection will consider arrangements for permanence for looked after children and children who return home. This will include the use of fostering, including adherence to fostering service regulation and national minimum standards, residential care and children placed out of local authority area.   It will also evaluate the quality of leadership, corporate parenting, including the management and governance arrangements in place to develop and support service delivery.

Children’s Services has remained consistently on the agenda for CMT since the difficulties we experienced some years ago and I’ve been particularly pleased with the corporate commitment to some of our innovations.  I mentioned in a recent blog that the Children’s Commissioner published her Hidden Ambitions report which recognised our work in helping care leavers to become apprentices, supporting their housing needs and using our Beyond Bricks and Mortar scheme to secure training and employment opportunities. Inspections are often unsettling experiences but I’m confident that staff and councillors will demonstrate our commitment to this critical service area.

City Deal

All is now set for approving the City Deal Joint Working Agreement at Council next month.  At this week’s shadow joint committee meeting we discussed the regional digital infrastructure projects.  A series of bids are being prepared to deliver the fibre-based infrastructure that will ensure the city and the region are digitally ready for the next wave of technology.

The Biggest Weekend

The eyes and ears of the music world will be on Swansea this weekend when the BBC’s Biggest Weekend comes to Singleton Park. The likes of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran will be leading the greatest collection of pop stars the city has seen in a single event. This has taken a huge amount of planning and organising and I’m grateful to all our staff who’ve worked so hard to bring this prestigious event to Swansea. There’s a series of spin-off initiatives as well that’ll have a lasting legacy.

Congratulations

The positive impact of Western Bay’s regional working across health and social care has landed two prestigious prizes at the All Wales Continuous Improvement Community’s (AWCIC) Annual Awards.  Western Bay won ‘Best Local Government Initiative’, and ‘Achieving a Common Purpose’ for its Commissioning for Complex Needs Programme which addresses irregularities in the quality of care across the region.  Well done to everyone involved.

I’m delighted that our city centre has once again been awarded the Purple Flag by the Association of Town and City Management. It’s great recognition for the partnership we’re involved in to make this area’s night-time economy safe and welcoming. Thank you to everyone for their efforts.

GDPR

New data protection laws (GDPR) take effect today and means people will have more rights over how personal information is used.  It also increases the responsibility of organisations like ours in the way we collect, store, use and share personal data – with much larger fines for breaches in the law.  More: www.swansea.gov.uk/staffnet/gdpr

I’m away next week so my next blog will be on June 8.

Setting objectives

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I had my annual appraisal this week to review my performance and to set my objectives for the coming year. The appraisal is done by a cross party group of councillors (known as the Chief Executive’s Appraisal and Remuneration Committee) whose job it is to hold me to account for the organisation’s performance and the commitments I gave to them on my appointment.  You may remember that I published my objectives in the blog last year. Thanks mainly to the efforts of our staff I was able to give a good account of myself as we’ve maintained or improved performance in the majority of services, despite facing significant budget reductions. It goes without saying that I’m very grateful to you for this.  The latest telephone survey indicates that two-thirds of our citizens are satisfied with the way we deliver services, although only one-third are likely to speak highly about us.  This still puzzles me but our feedback compares well with most other councils in the UK. The Committee considered my objectives for the coming year and I’ll post them on my blog when they’re confirmed.  In short I’ve committed to making sure the Council takes a strong lead in regional working, to delivering the City Deal, continuing the transformation of the Council, managing the budget and reviewing the senior management structure. This will be a challenging year for all of us with a grim financial outlook, potential local government reform and a huge challenge in re-modelling our city.  I hope with your support I can demonstrate further progress when the committee reviews my performance next year.

Local Government Reform

At Corporate Management Team we discussed the principles behind the Council response to the Welsh Government consultation on Strengthening Local Government: Delivering for People.  You’ll remember the proposal is to reduce the current 22 local councils to 10.  We hope to bring a report shortly to make sure that the views of Council are set out very clearly to the Welsh Government.  I know that the scrutiny panel chaired by Councillor Lyndon Jones looking into this will shortly produce their report and this will also help to inform our response which might include the following points that were raised by CMT:

  • Swansea Council is open to the idea of merger.
  • A voluntary merger approach is unlikely to deliver what the Welsh Government has set out.
  • If there’s a will to do this then it needs to be done rapidly i.e. by 2022.
  • The best model is the one that would deliver sustainable services over parochial interests.
  • We must first have a clear vision for local government in Wales expressed in outcomes for the next 10 to 20 years and structures should follow this.
  • There is no guarantee that biggest is always best.
  • There should be a radical delayering of responsibilities and accountabilities in local government in Wales to reflect Welsh Government as policy maker, local government as deliverer and a single inspectorate.
  • The merger proposals will create confusion in relation to existing collaborations. If authorities were to agree to merge, they may have very different views on arrangements that could freeze decision making on some collaborations until there is clarity.
  • There’ll be a large financial cost associated with local government re-organisation during a time of severe austerity. In 2014, CIPFA estimated that up-front costs of reorganisation across the whole of Wales could range between £160m and £268m.

When the report to Council is published I’ll add the link to my blog.  My best guess is that nothing is likely to happen quickly when the consultation ends as the Welsh Government are focussed on other things.

On a similar note, the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales has started an Electoral Review of Swansea’s Boundaries.  The consultation runs until July 24 and can be found here.

Virgin Media

I mentioned last week that Virgin Media had announced the start of consultation on the proposal to close its Swansea operation.  On Wednesday the Leader and I met the company to better understand and challenge the rationale for closure.  Whilst it’s clear the nature of the business is changing to reflect the fact that better digital infrastructure has reduced the number of fault calls dealt with at the Swansea contact centre, we told them that we thought it was a short-sighted move in the context of our City Deal digital projects. We’re already working with the company and Welsh Government to soften the blow through redeployment but I hope the company will take our views, and those of the workforce, into account when finalising a decision.

Congratulations

I was delighted to see an email from Nicole Dummett in Corporate Building and Property Services following the two recent awareness campaigns on Domestic Violence.  Staff in the department raised £193.49 and £161.43 towards the campaign for which the staff at the Domestic Violence One Stop Shop were extremely grateful. The first donation was spent on a Christmas party for some of our service users and their children, confidence-building classes and three children’s craft workshops.  This time I understand the donation will be used to support the Shoe Box scheme, particularly for male victims of domestic violence as the numbers are increasing.

Summer ball

Last night’s Lord Mayor’s Summer Ball was a great success. A series of awards were given out in recognition of people’s contribution to Swansea. I’m grateful to Joanne Jones in Corporate Marketing and all the team involved for organising a great event.

Hoping for a miracle

It looks like the Swans’ stay in the Premier League is all but over, barring the ten goal turnaround required for them to stay up. It’ll be a real shame to see the Swans relegated, not just for fans like me, but for the city and the wider region. There’s no doubt that having a Premier League club has been a great selling point for Swansea. So here’s hoping for a minor miracle at the weekend or a better season next year!

Housing matters

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This week I was interviewed by the Wales Audit Office on progress we’re making to ensure our 13,000 council homes meet the Welsh Housing Quality Standard.  I know a number of other staff and councillors have also been interviewed and the messages were consistently hammered home by all.  The purpose of this review is to determine whether we have appropriate arrangements in place to enable us to deliver the WHQS by 2020 and how we engage with tenants in the process.  The bottom line is we’re making good progress towards meeting the WHQS by 2020, although some challenges remain. Thanks to all staff and councillors who are involved in this complex and difficult £300 million investment programme which will improve the lives of all our tenants. Thanks also to Colin Goddard from the Strategic Delivery Unit for co-ordinating the project for us and supporting the audit process.  I will say more when the report is issued by the WAO.

Regional working

It’s been another busy week for regional collaboration, which continues apace in spite of the current consultation on council mergers.  The City Deal working agreement should be presented to all four councils in the region for approval in June.  At the Shadow Joint Committee on Wednesday we discussed transport and digital programmes in some detail and I know a lot of work is being done by our teams to support this.

On school improvement I met the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Kirsty Williams, to update her on progress made by ERW and the six councils over the last two months.  From 2016/17 to 2017/18 there’s been a 42% decrease in the number of schools causing concern in the ERW region and I’m particularly proud of the performance here in Swansea.  It’s a credit to all teachers, staff, councillors and governors involved.  In the meantime, we await the consultation on the new national model for education with interest as it could prompt further changes to how education services are delivered in Wales.

Have your say

We’re starting consulting on Monday on proposals that affect some of our day services and residential care for adults. Under the proposals we’d focus our residential care and day services on those with complex needs. We’ve also got over-capacity in these services so, if agreed following consultation, Parkway residential home and the day centres at the Hollies and Rose Cross would close. The proposals affect staff but we don’t anticipate compulsory job losses as we’ll be putting our efforts into redeployment, ER/VR etc. We’ve briefed staff and unions.  Details on how to have your say will be published on Monday.

New cafe

The refurbished 4th floor café re-opens on Monday with a new look and new name. The new cafe has an “industrial chic” feel and there’ll be free coffee on Monday 9.30-11am.  It’ll be a smart, informal meeting facility and the adjoining servery area will continue to offer food and drink and will itself be transformed soon.  Costs are being kept low thanks to the use of recycled and upcycled furnishings. Thanks to all the staff involved.

Data changes

New data protection laws come into force in less than a month.  It’s essential that all staff are aware of the changes these new GDPR regulations bring. Details here.

Foster Swansea

Foster Care Fortnight is rapidly approaching and yesterday I had my photo taken as part of the social media campaign to promote this vital service. I hope others will join the campaign and have their photos added. The campaign runs May 14 to 27. The theme for this year is once again ‘Foster care transforms lives’, using the hashtag #proudtofoster and #proudtosupportfostering

Congratulations and thanks

During the past few weeks we’ve been re-surfacing large parts of Fabian Way. Our teams have been working during the night to minimise traffic disruption. The work is now complete and it’s made a huge difference to one of the city’s main arteries. Thank you to all the staff involved for a great job.

 

 

 

 

Hard Times

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The budget for next year continues to dominate CMT’s work and we’ve been wrestling with some emerging issues to try to finalise our proposals.

The removal of some grants and increased spending pressures, including unfunded pay awards, have made the task of setting a balanced budget much more difficult this year. Over the coming weeks the details will be finalised with Cabinet before we report to Council following consultation.

I know this is a difficult time for staff and decisions will need to be taken that we wouldn’t consider if the financial position was easier.  Where staff are under threat of redundancy I’ve asked for particular efforts to be made to ensure that our redeployment processes operate quickly and effectively.

I’m also conscious there’s been a good deal of misinformation circulating about the proposed funding for schools.  Our Section 151 Officer, Ben Smith, and I will be writing to head teachers next week setting out the facts clearly so that the record can be put straight.

Local Government collaboration.

Yesterday the Leader and I met Alun Davies AM, Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services in the Welsh Government to discuss local government reform.  I’m speculating but I think it’s possible that there might be a change of emphasis and it is always possible that the issue of merging councils might reappear over the coming weeks.  This would have an impact on the current collaborations we’re involved in, particularly those involving education and economic development.  We’ll find out more by mid-February and I’ll keep you posted on developments.  In the meantime large amounts of my time, and that of colleagues, is tied up with regional collaborations and below is an update on the three main programmes.

ERW

This week I’ve been speaking to the six education directors in the ERW region about what needs to be done to improve the governance and effectiveness of the regional consortium and I’ll be meeting Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Education, Kirsty Williams in a few weeks to set out the position and make some recommendations for the future.

Western Bay

Last Friday I chaired the Western Bay Leadership Team where we discussed the progress made on the proposed move of Bridgend CBC to the Cwm Taf health board area.  This will be a real challenge for all involved but it’s essential we retain a focus on services to the citizen, so I was pleased to hear about the excellent progress being made by the Western Bay partnership.

City Deal

The Leader and I, along with colleagues from our three partner councils, met the Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns, and the Welsh Government Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Mark Drakeford.  We discussed the issues that remain outstanding before we can proceed to signing the Joint Working Agreement and I’m optimistic we can resolve these so that a report can be made to Council before the end of the financial year.

Over the past few months I’ve been working with our Corporate Innovation Officer, Rhys Curtis, on a seminar for lead members and officers on what a smart and connected Swansea will look like as we progress the City Deal projects.  I’ll say more about this in a couple of weeks but I’m anxious that we reach a wider audience of staff, councillors and partners so that the vision for the future can be shared and debated.  The seminar will be held in early February and I’ll report back and add links to the presentations as soon as possible.

Thanks and well done

Thanks to the staff in ICT who arranged the migration of CMT to Office 365 this week.  It was a smooth transition for which I’m very grateful.

Thanks to Mark Gosney and the High 5 team who this week organised a tea for this year’s winners with the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House.  This followed the kind offer that the Lord Mayor made at the High 5 Awards ceremony.

On Monday evening the Mansion House was the venue for a thank you event for all our partners in the City of Culture bid which gave the opportunity to remind everyone that we’ll continue to work with Welsh Government to make Swansea the Welsh capital of culture.

Our city centre rangers dealt with 21,015 incidents last year, ranging from enquiries from the public to working with the police to report and tackle anti-social behaviour. They also support city centre events and activities, help businesses with their questions and queries, and put safety and security arrangements in place. Well done to all involved.

Next week is the last working week for Greg Jones in our Communications team.  Greg is leaving to join the City Deal team so our paths will continue to cross frequently.  I’d like to thank Greg for all his hard work over the years and wish him well for the future.

Penblwydd hapus

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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.