Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

Budget report published

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A huge effort this week has gone into finalising our budget proposals for next year.

We’ve spent months discussing options with Members and we’ve now published the report for Cabinet on December 14. The budget has been a consistent theme in my blog so you’ll know the issues we face in terms of government funding, new spending pressures and a number of our services are over-spent due to rising demand and pressures.

It hasn’t been easy to reach this point and I want to thank the officers across the council who’ve been involved in preparing proposals and completing EIAs, along with Ben Smith, Sarah Willis and the finance team and staff in Access to Services, Communications and Democratic Services.

Once Cabinet agree proposals we’ll be consulting with the public and staff. We’ve planned a series of staff roadshows in January where you can learn more and have your say.

CMT has agreed further steps to reduce this year’s over-spend. On top of the vacancy freeze and spending restrictions, we’re reducing non-essential spending in the following ways:

  • Review and reduce the number of p-cards.
  • A workshop for staff with “buyer access” to Oracle.
  • All non-essential items removed from the i-procurement catalogue.
  • Non-essential spending approved by:
  • ICT hardware and software – Jo Harley.
  • Furniture – Geoff Bacon.
  • Advertising and bulk printing (non MFD) – Lee Wenham
  • Publicity/promotions – Lee Wenham

It’s more important than ever that we all support these measures to help reduce our in-year spending.

Phones

We’ve all been facing problems with our phone network in the past week. But we’ve been working on a modern, longer-term solution with the roll-out of Unified Communications. The current system is old and will continue to give us problems, so the sooner we can complete this move to the new system the better. My thanks to our networks team who’ve been working so hard to fix these issues and to those staff helping us switch to the new system.

City Deal

On Thursday the Leader and I attended an event for businesses as a means of updating them on the City Deal.  Around 200 businesses attended and the progress made was recognised by all.  There was a welcome sense of real anticipation and positivity among the businesses given some of their concerns over Brexit and the economy.  The leadership demonstrated by the public sector was warmly welcomed.  The Welsh and UK governments will shortly be conducting an independent review of the whole City Deal as the final stage of the project approval process and I hope they use this review to streamline processes and remove bureaucracy from the current approval arrangements.

Openreach

Having had discussions with Openreach for the past few weeks, it’s good to see the roll-out of the fibre network in Swansea.  The initial phase for SA1, SA2 and SA5 will hopefully be quickly followed by a broader roll-out to put Swansea in the leading pack for digital connectivity in the UK.  It’ll be about 24 times faster than the current UK average. Thanks to all who’ve been involved in delivering this latest sign of private sector confidence in the city.

New First Minister

Mark Drakeford has been elected Leader of Welsh Labour which means that he is likely to become First Minister in due course. I hope his appointment will give local government more clarity on reorganisation, regional working and the final budget settlement. The Leader and Cabinet Members have worked closely with him in his previous Welsh Government roles so I hope we can build on this.

Supporting families

We’ve received a toolkit from the Home Office to support EU citizens and their families to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme. Hopefully, it’ll help our staff deal with key issues such as housing, benefits, voting and safeguarding among others. We’ll provide further information to staff shortly.

Congratulations and thanks 

Colleagues in Social Services won a total of 16 awards at Tuesday’s Patient Choice Awards. The awards are a chance for patients, service users, carers, family and friends to say thanks to those who made a real difference by providing outstanding care. It’s great to get this recognition and I know many staff go the extra mile. Well done to all of you.

The team at our baling plant went the extra mile when a family got in touch to say their young daughter’s much-loved toy bunny had been accidentally placed in the waste compactor. She is about to go for her 39th operation and she’d had the toy as a baby. Plant supervisor Martin Rees along with Paul Brown, Andrew Phillips and Lee Howells emptied the skip and searched for the toy, eventually finding it after 45 minutes, much to the relief of the family. Thank you boys, that’s a lovely effort.

Our Property team have been praised in the Allotment and Leisure Gardener magazine. Having helped allotment holders manage their own sites, it said we’d done “everything to help this transition run smoothly”, and added: “Here in Swansea it’s an exciting future for the allotment movement.”

 

 

Two steps forward, one step back

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Economic development

The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon has had a tough week, but we’ll continue to work with the company to deliver this much-needed project.  The company chairman, Keith Clarke, has made the position very clear and I hope they’ll take forward the proposals with renewed impetus. The Leader, Deputy Leader and I met Lord Adonis last week, former chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, to update him on the progress made to date.  He was very supportive of the lagoon and I know he’ll be helping to get some important messages to the Government in the coming weeks.

Yesterday I attended the City Deal Programme Board where we finalised the joint working agreement for approval at the joint committee next week.  We’ll then seek Council approval to sign it next month.  Thanks to all the officers who’ve helped to complete it.  We’ve also been discussing a potential future bid under the national Local Full Fibre Network programme and this would radically improve the city and regional digital infrastructure.  The next few months will be very busy as the City Deal projects get under way so thanks also to all involved in their delivery.

CMT

CMT discussed a lot of important issues.  In addition to the latest updates on the revenue and capital budgets, we considered a new Compact with the Third Sector, reward and recognition of staff and the Cultural Services commissioning review.  The Cultural Services review is a massive piece of work and thanks go to Tracey McNulty and Jamie Rewbridge who patiently took us through the reports and answered all of our questions.  This will now be presented to Cabinet for their consideration. Our discussion on reward and recognition covered a lot of ground, building on the work of the Innovation Community.  I’m conscious that our approach to reward and recognition has not been a consistent one across all services and I want us to put that right so that it’s fairly and equally done for all staff.  More on this in the near future.

Objectives

I mentioned last week I’d be publishing my objectives.  Please follow this link to see them.

Inauguration

Today marks the inauguration of the new Lord Mayor of Swansea, Councillor David Phillips, and Lady Mayoress Councillor Sybil Crouch.  I’ll be attending Council this afternoon for the formal ceremony.  I wish both an exciting and enjoyable year in their role which I know they’ll undertake with great enthusiasm. My thanks go to the outgoing Lord Mayor, Councillor Phil Downing who, along with his wife Lilian, has done a fantastic job representing the city at a mind-boggling number of events.  They have raised the profile of Swansea at every opportunity and I’m very grateful to them for that.

Congratulations

Our Corporate Health, Safety, Emergency Management & Wellbeing Service has been awarded the Health & Wellbeing Shield. It recognises the work of occupational health, mandatory and bespoke training, stress management, helping hands and bully buddies. We were also rewarded for outstanding Health & Safety performance. Martin Rogers, from Waste Management, was runner-up for Employee of the Year in recognition of his work to improve health and safety at the bailing plant. The HSE, which was part of the judging panel, now want to use us as the example of best practice for others. This is a great achievement and thank you to everyone for their efforts.

I was delighted to hear we had three finalists at the Welsh Teaching Awards last week, all from Pontarddulais Comprehensive School.  They were:

  • Dylan Lewis – Best Use of Digital Learning
  • Hannah Hopkins – Teacher of the Year
  • Jan Waldron – Headteacher of the Year.

Congratulations to all three and it was fantastic that Dylan and Jan won.  During my visit to the school last year I was very impressed by what they were doing and it’s wonderful news that they’ve been recognised on the national stage for their efforts.

Our run of impressive Estyn inspection reports continues with congratulations to head teacher Alison Williams and all the team at Craigfelen Primary. The school was rated excellent in three of the five inspection areas and good in the other two.

The report noted how pupils enjoy going to the school and are very proud of their achievements. Equally important was the inspectors’ comments about how much families value the school’s provision so highly. Well done to all.

The miracle that didn’t happen

Sadly the much hoped for miracle never happened last Sunday and the Swans were officially relegated from the Premier League.  Let’s hope they can rebuild next season and once again secure top flight football for the city.  The last seven years have seen the city profile rise and they can be truly proud of their achievement.

Thanks for a great response

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Thanks to all the staff who’ve gone the extra mile in the last few days to make sure the city keeps running during the freezing conditions.  A special thanks must go to our highways staff for keeping the traffic moving and I know this is appreciated by officers and members across the Council as well as residents, hospitals and businesses.  I’m also conscious that our social care teams face particular challenges and I’m indebted to them for their commitment and care.

Planning our response to Storm Emma has been a really big task for the Corporate Management Team, with red and amber threat forecasts constantly shifting and making it difficult to predict snowfall.  Sometimes we have to err on the side of caution to keep people safe and sadly this meant the postponement of the annual budget Council meeting yesterday.  The meeting will now be held next Tuesday at 5pm. It also meant some of our St David’s Day celebrations were cancelled but others have moved indoors and the parade is still due to go ahead on Saturday.

We’ll try to keep everyone up to date via Staffnet and team briefings. The guidance to staff on inclement weather has been published again on Staffnet.

Thanks also to our schools who managed to remain open for as long as practicable.  Thankfully the weather looks set to warm up a bit next week so hopefully normal service will resume as soon as possible.

International Women’s Day

A range of activities have been planned this important year in women’s history. With the centenary last month of partial women’s suffrage and other important anniversaries this year we are making a big splash for International Women’s Day on Thursday March 8th.

The theme this year is “Press for Progress” which for us in Swansea Council means celebrating how far we have come but recognising there is still a way to go until gender and other types of equality are achieved here and in wider society.  Swansea Council has a far better gender balance than almost all the other councils in Wales at senior management level, where 50% of directors team and 44% of Leadership Team are female.  This is also the case with our elected members with women composing 42% of Council.

All staff and councillors are invited to a special event on Thursday 8th March at 1pm in the Civic Centre Council Chamber in which Swansea University’s Dr Alys Einon will talk about gender stereotyping in the workplace which we are sure will provide some important food for thought.

To book and for more details go here.

Scrutiny review

On Tuesday I was interviewed by the Wales Audit Office who’ve been exploring how ‘fit for the future’ our scrutiny functions are, whilst also considering how we’re responding to the current challenges including the Well-being of Future Generations Act.  Thanks to the great work done by our officers and councillors on scrutiny and policy development I was able to give a good account and point to examples of work produced by scrutiny and policy development and delivery committees.  Hopefully they’ll recognise the excellent work done in Swansea but we can always learn from other councils and so I’ll be keen to see any possible areas for improvement when they publish their findings.

Congratulations

The Dylan Thomas Exhibiton at the Dylan Thomas Centre has been named as the Best Family Venue in the UK, by Fantastic for Families. The Awards recognise the contributions of organisations made to arts and culture for families during 2017, and last night the Dylan Thomas Centre was named as the Best Family Venue ahead of the likes of Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park and artsdepot in London.  Thanks to Jo Furber, Georgia Thomas and the team at the Dylan Thomas Centre for securing this national award for us.

Congratulations also to Timm Dadds from Cwmrhdyceirw Primary School who has been nominated for an Into Film Educator of the Year Award. The ceremony will take place in Leicester Square on March 13  and Timm is shortlisted with two others in the whole of the UK. Fingers crossed for Timm.

Farewell

I learned this week that Sara Harvey will be leaving her current post as Regional Programme Director with the Western Bay Programme to return to the Welsh Local Government Association.  Sara has done an excellent job over the past few years and I wish her well for the future. Thanks Sara.

Poverty is everyone’s business

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Our efforts to tackle poverty across all our services is moving forward at pace.

Council recently agreed ‘Working Towards Prosperity for All in Swansea’ A Tackling Poverty Strategy for Swansea 2017 – 2020.  The strategy has three themes:

  • Empowering local people through involvement and participation
  • Changing cultures to reflect that tackling poverty is everyone’s business
  • Targeting resources to maximise access to opportunity and prosperity

The delivery plan has 81 objectives which touch virtually every part of our organisation so we all have a role in helping to tackle poverty. And this week I chaired the Poverty Forum network which agreed its delivery plan and then considered a presentation on the impacts of Universal Credit on Swansea and its citizens.  The simple fact is that more than 9,000 households in Swansea are worse off as a consequence of the changes.  The introduction of Universal Credit has presented some unique challenges for a number of organisations including ours.  A key issue is that all claimants require an email address which raises issues around digital inclusion – many claimants are arriving with no e-mail addresses and no means to access the internet.  I know that staff in libraries as elsewhere do fantastic work to support claimants. The presentation can be found here.

Budget update

Cabinet yesterday approved its budget which will now be discussed by Full Council on March 1. It includes:

  • Extra £3.5m for education.
  • Extra £2.7m for social care services
  • Around £150m for more 21stcentury schools
  • More than £57m on new council housing and a council house kitchen and bathroom replacement programme.
  • £1.4m extra in capital funding to help maintain roads and traffic management
  • £6m for a new fleet of waste collection vehicles
  • Proposals to charge school staff for parking on-site are not being mandated, although individual schools can charge for parking if they want to.

I know some staff are still “at risk” but I’m grateful to officers in HR who are continuing to redeploy staff and deal with ER/VR applications to help reduce any compulsory redundancies.

Western Bay

The Western Bay Regional Partnership Board reviewed and agreed the priorities for joint working outlined in its 2018-2023 plan. The main focus of this plan is on priorities for regional and integrated working between health and social care, including the use of the Integrated Care Fund in relation to:

  • Older People
  • Children and Young People with Complex Needs
  • Mental Health
  • Learning Disabilities (including Autism)
  • Carers and Young Carers

We suggested some amendments and endorsed the plan which will now be considered by each of the statutory partners (health board and local authorities). It’ll be submitted to Welsh Government and hopefully published  on April 1.  Sara Harvey and the Western Bay team have done a great job keeping this on track and dealing with the diverse views of partners.

Staff Suggestion Scheme

CMT received a presentation from Michael Owens and Rhys Curtis on the IT system to support the staff suggestion scheme that has been developed by the innovation community.  They’ve done a great job and we’ll be piloting and testing the system over the coming weeks.  I hope staff take the opportunity to use it.

Better relations

Our Services in the Community cross-cutting project is looking for staff to help develop and design services with the communities and build on new/existing relationships. It’s a chance to gain new skills such as co-production, bring their experiences to the project and develop new relationships with citizens. Further info is here Staff Net Pages – Services in the Community Project.

Have your say

Following the decision not to proceed with rail electrification to Swansea a number of ideas have been generated, including a South West Wales metro. It’s time to have your say, whatever your views are.  The UK Government has launched a consultation on the future of the Great Western Franchise and is asking passengers, businesses and councils for their views at two consultation events on 13 February 2018.  https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/great-western-rail-franchise

Big conversation

The first primary school Big Conversation was held at St Teilo’s Cwtch with 120 attendees and 70 children as part of the consultation for the Local Wellbeing Plan. Feedback from primary schools has been fantastic with a desire for more events to help engage young people. Thank you to everyone involved in organising and taking part in the event.

More from Blaenymaes

It’s busy times again at Blaenymaes Primary School who recently achieved the Eco Green Flag award. Their Eco Ambassadors celebrated by inviting Iolo Williams, TV presenter, to the school. Iolo told the school stories about his adventures including an encounter with a grizzly bear. Iolo and the Ambassadors raised the Eco flag with the rest of the school watching. Thanks to Amy Bacon and Amy Smith (Eco School Coordinators) who led the assessment for the eco award and the visit from Iolo Williams.

Sad news

Peter Campbell, our former Assistant Director of Housing, passed away last week.  Peter worked for the Council for 35 years and was a valued and trusted colleague.  I’ve written to his family expressing our condolences and our thanks for his major contribution to improving the lives of council tenants.

The shape of things to come

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The world is changing rapidly and technology increasingly shapes the way in which we live and work. We’re on the edge of fifth generation technology and we’re uniquely positioned to redesign and reshape our city through the City Deal and related projects.   The technology is complex but the principles are simple.  The benefits must be for our citizens, our businesses and to those we provide services to.  There’ll be impacts on every service area and we must understand and deal with the consequences of technological change on equality, security and privacy.

On Monday we held a seminar for senior councillors and officers on the subject of Smart and Connected Cities to increase awareness of policy advisers and policy makers. Mike Galvin, an expert in this field, is working on the digital strand of the City Deal and highlighted the potential of 5G technology.  Darren Topham, from our technology partner Gartner, described the top five most disruptive developing technologies including artificial intelligence, wearable devices, visual personal assistants and bots.  Infosys then explained the Internet of Things and the technology that supports it, how this might help to make a Smart City and what Swansea might look like five years from now.

Julie Snell, from Bristol is Open, explained how Bristol, the UK’s leading Smart City, is putting this technology into practice.  We’ll be having further discussions with colleagues over the bridge to embed their learning into our plans.

We’re hoping to roll-out this programme to more councillors, officers and our partners.  All the presentations can be found here.

Thank you to all who attended, but particularly to Rhys Curtis, our innovation officer, who worked tirelessly on this event.

Budget latest

The draft budget proposals are published in a report for Cabinet next week. We’ll be spending more than £400 million on services, including extra cash for social services and education as well as funding the national 2% pay award for staff. We’ve also had to identify savings of £28 million which will impact on services and staff. I know this is a really difficult time for staff who are affected, but I want to reiterate my commitment to avoiding compulsory redundancies where we can. That’s why managers are being urged to work with staff and workshops involving staff and the unions have been set up to explore options.  I am still involved in eleventh hour discussions on education grant funding !!!

This is the most difficult budget I’ve ever been involved in and although there’s no doubt over the challenges we face, I want to thank everyone for continuing to do a great job in very testing circumstances.

Music festival

The Brangwyn Hall hosted the Schools Day for the Abertawe Festival of Young Musicians.  The hall was packed and I managed to catch a few songs during the primary school showcase including my young friends from the Penyrheol School of Rock.  All the schools demonstrated the commitment to music and the arts that characterised our City of Culture bid, nurturing young talent and having fun.  Thanks to all involved in staging and taking part in this fantastic event.

Blaenymaes School

Children’s Commissioner Sally Holland visited Blaenymaes School following an invite from its Rights Respecting Ambassadors in Year Six. Sally asked them to launch an intergenerational group and last week she worked with the school council and ambassadors on a proposal for a gardening group with older people in the community.

Sally was impressed with a number of initiatives at the school and said, “It’s very exciting that Blaenymaes are starting an intergenerational project, which will offer a real opportunity to promote positive relationships between the oldest and youngest members of this community.”

Wellbeing

I mentioned last week that the Big Wellbeing Event on January 31 at the Brangwyn and George Hall for staff, councillors, partners and foster carers. It was a huge success and 627 signed into the event though we know far more actually attended. My thanks to everyone involved.

I’ve moved

I’ve moved down the corridor to Room 208 in the Guildhall.  Thanks to staff in Facilities and ICT who moved me rapidly and painlessly to the room I originally occupied 14 years ago!

Well done

Congratulations to headteacher Jeff Bird, the staff, governors, parents and the wider community at Bishopston Comprehensive School on their recent Estyn inspection.  The school was judged to be excellent in all five categories.  The inspectors commented, “Leaders at Bishopston Comprehensive School have established an ethos whereby pupils develop outstanding social, learning and life skills. Learning experiences meet the needs of pupils exceptionally well and teaching supports pupils to reach high standards.”

The Dylan Thomas Centre has been named in the shortlist of the ‘Best Family Venue’ category, of the Fantastic for Families Awards. The winner will be announced on March 1. Congratulations to the team and let’s hope it’s a double celebration on St David’s Day

Open Day

Swansea mosque is taking part in the national #VisitMyMosque to give the local community an insight on Sunday, February 18.