Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

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As we come to the end of the year it is a good time to reflect on the events of the last 12 months.

Despite the best attempts of our officers and elected members the future of the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon remains uncertain.  In January we celebrated the anniversary of the publication of the Hendry report but by June the UK Government confirmed that it would not be supporting the project.  We continue to explore different ways to deliver the scheme and 2019 will see us redouble our efforts to move forward.

In February we held our Smart City event at the Swansea tech hub and this has proved to be an important milestone in moving our digital strategy forward.  Investment by Openreach into the City and the recent submission of our Local Full Fibre Network bid have followed as the City Deal digital projects get underway.  2019 will see more work on the ground as we futureproof Swansea for the impact of fifth generation technology.

March saw the unveiling of the latest local government reform proposals and the suggestion that ten councils were the right footprint for Wales but by July these had been consigned to the dustbin of history.  This was also the month that we completed and opened the first council housing scheme built in the City for a generation which was a real highlight of the year for me.

In April we opened Wales’ first fully integrated family centre and primary care centre at Mountain View in Mayhill and in May we successfully hosted the Radio 1 Biggest Weekend, demonstrating our continuing commitment to culture. More events followed, including the Wales National Airshow along with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding for the Skyline project at Kilvey Hill.

In July we were visited by the Care Inspectorate Wales as they inspected our approach as a corporate parent, our progress on safeguarding and the performance of our Children’s Services.  In October they issued their report which was highly positive and complimentary about the work our social services teams are doing.

In August our schools celebrated another excellent set of results.  The Senior Management Review was completed with the appointment of my deputy, Adam Hill.

September was a difficult month following the provisional budget announcements from Welsh Government and we completed the penultimate stage in approving our Local Development Plan with the inspectors confirming that there would be no further public hearings.

In October we made significant progress on our Regional Education Consortium, ERW, with an agreement by the Joint Committee to make structural changes and revisit the collaborative approach.  This will be driven forward again in January so that we can ensure that schools get the school improvement support in a more consistent and coherent way. We also celebrated the best High 5 awards to date with inspirational young people from across the City.

My highlights for November were the opening of Lon Las School by TV presenter Huw Edwards and the first signs that the Welsh Government were responding to our concerns about the budget settlement.  I was very grateful to Ben Smith for his support in my submission to the Welsh Assembly Petitions Committee and I hope that it brought home to policy makers the impact of the scale of cuts on the ground.

December was marred by the news that the City Deal Delta Lakes scheme in Carmarthen had some major problems but the Joint Committee, chaired by Councillor Rob Stewart took rapid and decisive action to ensure that the other City Deal schemes could continue to progress smoothly.

So what can we learn from the year’s events?  We are a diverse and complex organisation that provides essential services for our citizens and we do it well.  We deal efficiently and effectively with the challenges thrown at us and this is because we have a talented and committed workforce.  I know morale is not helped by the constant pressure of austerity but we have demonstrated a resilience that other councils would envy.

So thanks to all of you for your hard work this year.  I don’t doubt that next year will be equally challenging for us all but I know you will deal with it as you have consistently done; with innovation, determination and commitment.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.  Happy New Year.

A tough week ahead

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Our budget discussions with Cabinet get under way next week as we prepare for yet more tough decisions. We’ve set aside a week to go through the current situation, the outlook for the next four years and what that means for our budget. In short, in the past four years we’ve undergone major change and transformation which has saved almost £70m. The daunting prospect we face in the next four years is to save a further £80m. That isn’t because we haven’t done our job, we have, but the continued austerity measures and reduction in government funding will continue for the foreseeable future. Add to this the budget pressures such as rising demand for social care and unfunded pay rises and the picture is very demanding. That’s the backdrop for our discussions and next week is the chance to look at how we bridge that budget gap. Once we have more details of the proposals we’ll engage staff across the council through team meetings and roadshows.

We’ve already taken some tough decisions including the forthcoming transfer of our leisure centres to a not-for-profit leisure trust, Freedom Leisure. This was the only realistic option that protected our staff and facilities in these unprecedented budget times. The recent Unison newsletter compares this transfer to the previous Capgemini ICT contract and the housing stock transfer ballot a decade ago. It’s misleading to make these comparisons. The issues with the Capgemini contract have been well-documented, along with my own personal views about it. But it’s totally different to what we plan with leisure staff and facilities in partnership with Freedom. The ballot on housing stock transfer was a government policy and, faced with limited resources at the time, we had little choice but to give tenants a say. They rejected it and I’m delighted that since that time, due to the work we put in to get a good deal through the housing revenue account subsidy buy-out and the hard work of our staff, we’ve built new council houses and invested tens of millions in improving council homes. I welcome discussions with unions but I also want staff to feel reassured and confident about the decisions we make.

Senior management restructure

We’ve appointed three Heads of Service to complete the senior line-up in the Place directorate. Nigel Williams is Head of Building Services, Geoff Bacon Head of Property Services and Mark Wade is Head of Housing & Public Health. All three have been doing the job on an interim basis and I’m sure they’ll continue the good work. Congratulations to all three.

New recruits

Welcome to our 15 new apprentices who’ve started work this week. They’ll spend the next four years training to become carpenters, plumbers, electricians, plasterers and multi-trade personnel. They’ll work on projects such as constructing our new schools, building new energy-efficient council homes and improving existing council housing. They’re the latest in a long line of trainees and I’m really proud of our track record with apprentices.

A Healthier Wales

A Healthier Wales: our plan for health and social care published in June sets out 40 actions to be implemented in the next three years, through a dedicated Transformation Programme.  I was asked to join the Advisory Board set up to support its delivery. On Tuesday I attended its first meeting, along with colleagues from the health and social care spectrum.  The board will review the funding allocated to new projects, monitor progress on delivering the actions and discuss the need for wider system change and progress towards achieving the future vision of health and social care. You’re probably fed up with me rattling on about the financial challenges facing councils but the demographic time-bomb of an ageing population with increasing care and health needs is the largest of all these challenges.  Systemic change is needed because the existing arrangements are unaffordable.  Our approach to delivering adult services must change but this is the case in every council across the UK.  I hope I can make a useful contribution to this Transformation Board because it’s critical to our well-being as a city and a council.

Corporate Management Team

CMT this week discussed a range of matters including disaster recovery for ICT, our new Oracle sickness monitoring system and the current year budget monitoring.  Our budget tracker shows we need to increase the pace of implementing this year’s savings and I’ll be impressing on managers the need to do this.  We also agreed the draft corporate plan and performance report in advance of its consideration by councillors.  Thanks to all the staff who have worked on this.

ERW

I’ve been working with colleagues to improve the operation of our regional school improvement consortium, ERW.  As lead Chief Executive I’ve been dealing with a number of issues and I hope to be in a position to communicate the way forward to colleagues in schools across the region in the next few weeks.  It’s essential we build upon the excellent performance of our schools and provide the best possible support for school improvement across the Mid and South West Wales region.

Smart City

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On Monday we held our second Smart & Connected Cities conference to engage some key partners.  Around 50 delegates attended from private, public and academic sectors including seven of our digital leaders from schools.  The aim was to:

  • Raise awareness of developing digital technologies, what 5G will mean and what the Internet of Things (IoT) applications might be.
  • Develop an outline vision for a Smart City.
  • Start discussions with businesses on their needs and aspirations for digital connectivity, business support, skills and infrastructure.

The Leader, Councillor Rob Stewart opened the conference and reminded the audience that Swansea played a central role in the industrial revolution and now stands on the brink of a new age of technology where we can once again lead the world in innovation and creativity.  Julie James AM set out the Welsh Government’s ambition to work with councils to deliver the City Deal and the digital projects that underpin it. Mike Galvin, who’s working for the City Region on the development of a digital strategy, explained what 5G technology is and how we’re preparing to install the infrastructure to enable it.

This was followed by a fascinating presentation from Professor Matt Jones, Head of the College of Science at Swansea University.  Matt focussed on the human aspects of these new technologies and the Internet of Things.  It’s important to recognise the impacts of technology on citizens and the risks and benefits arising from it. Finally, Infosys, our technology partners, delivered their presentation on what the Smart City might look like and how it might support our citizens.

The presentations were well received and the conference, organised excellently once again by Rhys Curtis, was a great success.  We must now await the response to our bid to DCMS for the 5G connected cities fund which will enable us to connect the city and region with a state of the art fibre network.

Senior Management Review

My report on the review of our senior management structure is now published and will be considered by Council on June 21.  It’s important we reduce senior management costs to invest in front-line services whilst retaining resilience to deal with the growing challenges of regional collaboration and austerity.  If Council approves the report then, subject to consultation, I’ll progress the proposals as quickly as possible to minimise disruption and ensure organisational stability.

Scrutiny

On Monday evening I gave my presentation to the annual scrutiny work planning conference chaired by Councillor Mary Jones.  The conference then considered what topics would be most appropriate for scrutiny this year, facilitated by Brij Madahar and our scrutiny team who did an excellent job.  Scrutiny is a critical process in local government so thanks to all involved.

Inspection time

I mentioned recently the Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) will undertake an inspection of our Children’s Services in July.  This week CMT received its regular report on performance in Children’s Services and updates on staff communication from the Head of Service, Julie Thomas, and Gemma Whyley, project manager. Safeguarding is our most important priority and despite the major challenges facing our social work teams we continue to make progress and I’m grateful to all staff who deliver this essential service.  I, along with other colleagues and councillors, will be interviewed as part of this process in the coming weeks and I‘ll say more about this.I was particularly impressed by the staff communication work undertaken in the past year and I’ve asked Gemma to come to our next Leadership Team meeting to see whether there are lessons for other areas in ensuring staff communication is consistent and effective.

Lagoon

Well it‘s been another week of to-ing and fro-ing on the lagoon with the UK Government planning and cancelling announcements and unfortunately creating more confusion than clarity. Interestingly, the Welsh Pension Panel considered the lagoon as an infrastructure investment earlier this week and were supportive in principle, providing agreement can be reached on the strike price.  We anticipate there’ll be an announcement next week so thanks to all who’ve expressed their support for the project to date.

Successful futures

More than 30 schools and 1,000 pupils have been taking part in a creative-thinking project where they design and make their own product. And today pupils will set up a stall in Castle Gardens to sell their products. There’ll then be Grand Final held at National Waterfront Museum on July 9 where pupils will present their business plans, profit/loss figures and evaluations and receive awards. Well done to all the pupils and staff involved.

All that Jazz

Yesterday evening I attended the launch of the 5th Swansea International Jazz Festival which is supported by our events team.  This event goes from strength to strength and kicked-off with Laurence Cottle’s Big Band.  Lawrence, Swansea born and bred, is one of the world’s top bass guitarists and a great example of the cultural talent produced and developed here.  It was an amazing evening and I hope many of you will come down to the marina area this weekend to enjoy the programme, much of which is free.

Congratulations

Janet Waldron, headteacher at Pontarddulais Comprehensive School, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. This honour follows last month’s Professional Teaching Awards Cymru ceremony where Janet was named Headteacher of the Year in Wales.