Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

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.

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.

 

Plugging the gap

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I mentioned last week just how difficult this year’s budget process is.  I’ve spent most of the week dealing with a number of 11th hour issues including discussions with Welsh Government over education grants.  Unfortunately, this has driven a coach and horses through my diary so apologies to those people I was scheduled to meet.  Amongst the cancelled appointments in my diary was the Staff Well-being event held in the Brangwyn Hall on Wednesday which by all accounts was a massive success.  I’ll say more about it next week.

The public consultation on the budget process finishes today which gives us the time to ensure that reports are finalised in time for Council on March 1.  I know that discussions are taking place with staff affected by the proposals and I’ve urged managers to make every effort to avoid redundancies, however difficult that may be.  I hope to see staff, managers and unions working together to come up with other options.

Work will then begin immediately on next year’s financial challenge and my thanks go to all who’ve worked harder than ever before to prepare the budget.

I know some staff may be considering taking ER/VR so it’s worth me flagging up some changes to the scheme. We’ve been offering an enhanced ER/VR scheme, giving staff additional benefits using a 45-week calculator. Unfortunately, the pot of money we set aside to fund these enhanced payments will run out by the end of June. This means we can’t offer the enhanced rate after March 31, so applications after that date will be considered on the 30-week calculator. In the past we’ve been able to extend the deadline for the enhanced rate because there was money left in the pot, but our Head of Financial Services and Service Centre, Ben Smith, has made it clear that’ll definitely not be the case after March 31 because the money will have run out.

Staff travel

Leadership Team looked at the issue of staff travel and how we can make it easier and more efficient for employees. A lot of time and effort is spent on travelling both in and out-of-county as part of our jobs, but with changing technology and new ways of working there’s an opportunity to take a fresh look at what we do. It’s early days in the discussions but we considered issues such as car share, parking at council locations, using Skype to avoid travel, pool cars and our existing fleet. Our Highways and Transportation team will carry out further work and I’ll update you.

CMT

Corporate Management Team this week considered a range of issues including the budget, social care charging policy and the Prevention Strategy. We also had a demonstration of the online sickness absence system that’s being developed by our in-house IT team.  Hopefully this will produce accurate and timely information to help us all manage sickness absence more effectively.  Sickness has a heavy cost to the Council each year which compounds the budget challenge and increases the likelihood of job losses.  We’ll be working with the Leadership Team to refine the system over the coming weeks.  Thanks to Leanne Casey and Richard John who came to CMT to present this to us.

Schools

I know opinion is divided over the Welsh Government’s school categorisation process but I was delighted to see the performance of Swansea schools in the latest round.  We were one of a handful of councils with no schools in the red category and my thanks go to all the staff in our schools and education service for their efforts.

The Biggest Weekend

The Biggest Weekend is coming to Swansea this summer with Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift headlining at Singleton Park. This is a fantastic coup and something our Events Team has been working on for a number of years.  It adds to our summer events which include Man Engine, Little Mix and The Killers at Liberty Stadium, the Wales Airshow and Now the Hero / Nawr Yr Arwr which justifies our position as Wales’ Capital of Culture. Tickets for The Biggest Weekend go on sale on Monday, February 12, at £18 plus £4.50 booking fee. Further information here  or www.bbc.co.uk/biggestweekend

Well-being

You can have your say on plans to develop a better Swansea as part of the consultation on the Local Well-being Plan. It’s been drafted by the Swansea Public Service Board and an online survey can be found at https://www.swansea.gov.uk/psb or in sessions held at the Civic Centre on Feb 6 at 4pm-5pm, the Baling Plant on Feb 12, 9.30am-10.30am and Heol y Gors on Feb 9 at 7.30am-10.30am.

New build

Plans to develop a new purpose-built school for vulnerable young people as part of our EOTAS provision have cleared an important hurdle. The Welsh Government’s Capital Panel recommended to approve the business case. This approval is now subject to the Cabinet Secretary’s final decision. Let’s hope it gets agreed.

History month

To mark LGBT History month, we’ll be flying the pride flag at the Civic Centre in a series of events taking place across the city.  Supported by our Staff LGBT+ Group, our library service has a display created from newspaper cuttings celebrating the history of LGBT in Swansea.  They’re also showing ‘Britain on Film: LGBT Britain’ on February 24.

Swans

And finally, congratulations to the Swans on another well-deserved victory against one of the top clubs on Monday.  Even I’m starting to regain hope they’ll survive in the Premier League which will be another massive plus for the city.

The show must go on

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I hope those of you who took time off over the festive period had a great break.  For those of you who worked through it I want to repeat my thanks.  There were a number of incidents to deal with during the holiday period, many caused by the horrible weather we experienced.

I must say a huge thank you to all those involved in responding to the crisis caused by water leaks at the Grand Theatre.  There are too many people to mention but staff at the theatre and colleagues in corporate building and property services and ICT went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the theatre re-opened within 24 hours of the leak.  It was a tremendous effort and demonstrates their total commitment to the old adage that “the show must go on”.

Hats off also to all the front line officers who helped clear up after this week’s storms and floods.  Keeping the city moving and safe in the face of violent storms is no mean feat but they achieved it once again and we should all be grateful for that.

Corporate Management Team

On Wednesday CMT met to discuss a number of issues including an update on this year’s budget monitoring. Whilst we’ve made significant progress we’re still heading for an overall overspend this year and so a reminder that the current spending restrictions remain in force is timely.  We also considered a report on corporate risks, including financial ones, and we’ll be working with Cabinet Members to agree these next week.  We also discussed the current challenges of regional collaboration and the potential for a change of direction by Welsh Government that will need some detailed discussion with councillors over the coming weeks and months. The Leader and I are meeting the new minister next week so I’ll update you on any developments.

On Thursday the Leadership Team worked on a range of topics including our Organisational Development and Commercial strategies.  I’ve mentioned previously that the best way to protect jobs and sustain frontline services is to become a more commercial organisation and to look for new ways to generate income.

New Year’s Honours

I was delighted to hear Sue Hollister, former Head Teacher at Cefn Hengoed School, was awarded the MBE.  It’s a well-deserved recognition of her outstanding achievements in education and her contribution to improving outcomes for thousands of our children and young people. I was also delighted that Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott, Senior Pro-Vice Chancellor and Professor of Microbiology at Swansea University, was awarded the OBE for services to microbiology and the advancement of women in science and engineering. I’ve worked with Hilary on a number of projects including the Swansea Science Festival and the Soapbox Science events I’ve mentioned in previous blogs.

Congratulations

You may have read on StaffNet that Laura Collins and the Foster Swansea team held a collection for food banks at the Child and Family staff development day in December.  They collected enough food to feed 375 people this Christmas which is a fantastic achievement.  Thanks to all who took part.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

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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 9th among all 22 councils, up from 15th 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.

Peter Blake

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.