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.

Brexit no clearer

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Well it’s been a busy week in Whitehall as the politicians share their differences over the nation’s withdrawal from the EU.  With only three months to go until the deadline it feels like there are still so many unanswered questions that the future is impossible to predict. We’re doing our best to plan for any eventuality through our corporate risk management process but the recent macro-economic predictions aren’t easy reading, irrespective of the form of Brexit. It remains to be seen whether the Prime Minister’s deal makes it through Parliament.  I know our elections team are watching developments with interest as some form of vote, be it another referendum or election, seems a possibility to which we’d need to react very rapidly.  We’ll continue to monitor the situation closely.

Budget

Cabinet will today consider next year’s revenue budget and the savings proposals needed to deliver a balanced budget. The proposals affect both the public and staff and we’ll be launching the online consultation later today. We’re also holding staff roadshows in January so that you can have your say. In the meantime, you can speak to your manager about any proposals affecting your area.

CMT discussed the delivery of the potential savings programme and how this can be done in a way that minimises redundancies and maintains services.  This will be a real challenge but we’re determined to work with staff and trade unions to manage the process fairly and transparently.  In the meantime, we continue to press the Welsh Government to improve the settlement, particularly around the unforeseen hit caused by the increased employer contributions to teachers’ pensions.

Cabinet reshuffle

New First Minister Mark Drakeford has announced his new Cabinet. We look forward to working with them.

Education

On Monday I met Geraint Rees, the lead officer for ERW, to prepare for January’s meeting of the ERW Joint Committee.  This will be an important milestone in the improvement journey for our regional consortium and I know Geraint has been in discussion with a number of head teachers in Swansea and West Wales.  We’re also due to appear at the ERW joint scrutiny meeting in early January to update on progress and respond to any concerns they have.

On Tuesday I joined the other three regional Chief Executive leads for the education consortia to discuss with Welsh Government and the WLGA the emerging national accountability framework for schools.  A lot of work has been done in liaison with the OECD to learn from global best practice and apply the lessons to Wales.  I‘ll say more about this emerging framework when I can but there are some proposed radical differences from the existing arrangements which in my view will require extensive discussion and consultation with schools and education colleagues.

I also managed to catch up with Paul Orders, CEO at Cardiff, to discuss the lagoon projects in Wales and our joined up approach to the emerging thinking on the Shared Prosperity Fund, the post-Brexit replacement for European Structural funding programmes.

On the topic of the lagoon, we’ve had a really encouraging response to our recently-published invitation for companies to express an interest in delivering the project. We’ve had responses ranging from multi-national companies who want to deliver the entire scheme to those who want to play a specific role in it. The task group led by our Leader Rob Stewart will now consider the responses before deciding the next steps.

City Deal

The Leader and I met Swansea University to get a better understanding of the current issues following press reports on the City Deal Delta Lakes scheme.  Although none of our joint projects with the university are affected by the recent events the Leader is commissioning an internal audit review into the processes involved and this will run alongside the recently announced UK and Welsh Government independent review.  We’re also continuing to engage with the governments on our city centre projects to ensure that they’re not held up by these events.

Well done

This week Estyn published their findings following their visit to Penyrheol Comprehensive and they rated the school good in all five inspection areas and praised the quality of teaching, the support provided to pupils and the behaviour and attitude of the pupils themselves. Congratulations to all involved.

Thank you to Ian Rees in Cultural Services who went the extra mile for the United States-based parents of a baby boy whose ashes they scattered in Bracelet Bay following his sad passing 14 years ago. Ian took time out on his day off to fulfil their request for a photo of his name written in the sand and sent them this picture. Needless to say they were overwhelmed with gratitude.

Christmas

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the staff choir’s Christmas event at the Civic Centre yesterday, though I hear it went very well. The staff choir is a great thing to be supporting and if you want to participate you can find out more here.

You can support JR Events’ ‘Together at Christmas’ event in the Brangwyn Hall on Wednesday, that includes a free, two-course dinner for people who are vulnerable, feel isolated or may be homeless. You can donate unused toiletries to Lindsay Sleeman in Room 152 of the Guildhall.

If you’re looking for a gift with a difference the council has a range of ideas from show tickets at the Grand to hanging baskets and adult courses. You can also adopt a bench or flower bed in a loved one’s name. Find out more at: www.swansea.gov.uk/giftideas

 

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.”

 

 

None the wiser!

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The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on Monday announced an end to austerity but I have to say it doesn’t feel like that for councils in Wales.  A simple analysis by respected commentators has made clear that once the promises for future funding for the NHS are taken into account most of the rest of the public sector faces longer-term continued real terms reductions. The harsh reality is austerity for local government seems to have no chance of going away any time soon. However, in the short term there were a few glimmers of light:

  • Extra cash for capital and revenue coming to Wales, totalling £550m over three years.
  • Local government is a stated Welsh Government priority if extra cash becomes available, specifically for schools, potholes and social care.
  • It’s too early to tell the amount and it depends on the specific priorities for Welsh Government

However, the announcement on business rates may be a negative one for us. If they are reduced by a third, as in England, this will impact on our core funding.

More fundamentally there are serious issues about the way national pay and pension decisions are announced without being fully-funded.  It’s going to cost us £10m next year, yet we’ve only been given an extra £18,000. And tucked away in the budget was a technical announcement on UK government’s one-off reserves to smooth the pain of the cost of applied employers’ pension increases totalling some £4.7 billion. We’re continuing to lobby along with the WLGA and I know colleagues in the trade unions are doing the same. We have to make sure some of this comes to Welsh authorities facing real spending pressures, not just for use in England. We’ll know more from Welsh Government on our final share of funding on December 19.  Hopefully it’ll be Santa rather than Scrooge that delivers the definitive message!

New Deputy starts

Adam Hill, our new Deputy Chief Executive, has started with us this week. He has valuable experience in a number of local government roles as well as working in senior positions in other sectors. It’s really good to have him in CMT and he’ll be getting around to meet as many of you as he can in the coming weeks and months. I’m sure you’ll join me in welcoming Adam to Swansea and wishing him all the best.

New ways of working

We know some of our working practices would benefit from a new approach so we’re going to test some new ways of working in a 12-month pilot scheme. We’ve chosen three teams where the focus will be on work output rather than the number of hours worked. This will mean changes to the current flexi and core hours’ systems with staff in the pilot areas no longer being required to record time.  They’ve already taken part in workshops over the last few weeks to discuss how new ways of working will work in their area and to ensure services are not adversely affected. Participation in the pilot is voluntary and affects only Human Resources, the Service Centre and Corporate Property Services teams. I’m really interested to see how it goes, but also to ensure we assess the full picture so that we’re clear about what works and what doesn’t and where these kind of changes may work elsewhere.

Staff survey

You’ve got just a few more hours to have your say in our latest staff survey. The shortened survey is quick and easy to complete so please take some time to do so. It really is important we have your views so that we can take actions and make further improvements based on your feedback.

Deputy finance chief

Congratulations to Jeff Dong who’s been appointed as the Deputy Chief Finance Officer and Deputy S151 Officer.  Jeff will lead on a number of strategic finance projects including pensions, treasury and capital.  In line with spending restrictions and vacancy management the post is on an interim basis until March 31, 2019.

Good news

It’s great to see we’ve short-listed three bidders to take over the former 360 site on the prom in front of St Helen’s. It’s a prime site and we want to create a vibrant and exciting facility on the beach-front. We’re also expecting some good news on the Hafod Copperworks scheme with Heritage Lottery Funding hopefully being confirmed shortly. Thank you to all the officers working on these schemes.

Western Bay

Our Regional Partnership Board for Western Bay met this week to consider a number of important issues and projects to transform the way social care and health are delivered across the region.  This included a review of the Integrated Care Fund by the Wales Audit Office, an update on the National Strategy for Autism, the Strategic Framework for Mental Health and the first bids to the All Wales Transformation Fund.  We were also reassured progress is being made on Bridgend’s transfer out of the ABMU health board area and into Cwm Taf. I think this collaboration is making real progress but there are still too many meetings and a cumbersome governance regime. I hope we can work with partners to simplify this as I’m conscious a huge amount of officer and member time is devoted to attendance and participation.

Award

Congratulations to John Chappell, one of our social services drivers at Client Transport (ITU) on being nominated for an ABMU Health Board Patient Choice Award. John has been nominated by the public for going the extra mile during a medical emergency. He’ll be attending a celebration event on December 4, where he will be presented with his certificate.

Are we a good parent?

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The Care Inspectorate Wales have been with us again this week and I met with them on Wednesday to talk through our approach as a corporate parent, our progress on safeguarding and the performance of our Children’s Services.

Thanks to Gemma Whyley and Julie Thomas for their support and guidance as the inspection process is an important one if we are to improve our services further.  Amongst the areas I felt confident but not complacent about was our performance as a corporate parent and the work done across the organisation to ensure children in our care have the best start in life and are able to realise their ambitions.  This is a reflection of the work done for children in care by staff across the council which I’m very proud of and grateful for.  This was particularly important as children in care was a key theme for the inspectors.

A good corporate parent should think the same way about the children in its care as any other parent should do.  Are they able to achieve their ambitions, experience a good education, feel safe and secure, live free from poverty and enjoy life?  There were a number of examples beyond the direct work of social services that I was able to give to demonstrate this commitment, including the measures we’ve taken on housing, education, council tax, the apprenticeship strategy, Beyond Bricks and Mortar and cultural event invites, all of which benefit children in our care and care leavers.

We won’t know the outcome from CIW for some weeks yet but thanks to all the staff involved in the inspection. I hope to thank them in person this afternoon at an event to mark the end of the three-week inspection.

Regionalisation

We’re waiting to hear the next steps in relation to local government reform following the scrapping of compulsory merger proposals.  It sounds like another working group is on its way and I’ll be seeking to be represented on it.  In the meantime, I’ve spent this week in joint committee meetings for ERW and Western Bay and at the City Deal programme board.  The workload associated with all this collaboration is growing massively and following the senior management restructure I’ll be looking at the best way to ensure we’re represented at the various meetings that have filled up my calendar.

There are some significant challenges in relation to ERW which I’ll be working with regional colleagues on and there’s much to be done on the Western Bay collaboration in preparation for Bridgend Council’s departure next April.

Your home, your health

I’ve been working with colleagues in housing, social care and the health board to organise a symposium on housing and health at the Liberty Stadium in October.  The links between good housing and good health outcomes are strong and I hope the symposium can help us develop our strategies and investment programmes to help promote independence for older people, combat the scourge of homelessness and tackle the impacts of welfare reform and fuel poverty.  I’ll say more about this as the date approaches but if you are interested then you might wish to mark October 5 as a date in your diary.

High 5

The nominations for this year’s High 5 Awards are closing today. Thank you to everyone who’s been involved and to those who’ve nominated young people. I look forward to the judging process and planning the awards night in the autumn.

End of term        

As the end of the school year approaches I’d like to thank all the teachers and support staff for their efforts during the year.  I’ve been impressed with the performance of schools across the city and this has been evidenced in a series of ESTYN inspection reports throughout the year.  Have a well-earned rest and come back refreshed after the summer break as the next cohort of learners will be arriving.  Thanks to all.

Best wishes

Another long-serving employee is leaving with Clare Watson setting out for a new life in Brittany. Clare has worked as a specialist teacher for 20 Years and has 37 years’ experience working with pupils with additional learning needs. Based at YG Bryn Tawe during the last 14 years, Clare has provided support to pupils from Welsh medium schools as well as providing essential training across Swansea.