Chief Exec's Blog

An update from the Chief Executive

It couldn’t have happened without us

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Last week I mentioned that there would be no blog this week as I have been on leave but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to thank everyone involved in organising the BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend music festival in Singleton Park last Saturday and Sunday.  60,000 people from across Swansea and the rest of the UK descended on Singleton Park to enjoy the event.  All our major hotels were fully booked as over 10,000 people from all corners of the UK joined the UK’s biggest music festival this year. The Biggest Weekend contributed a massive £2.4m to the local economy.

The media coverage of our city on BBC Radio and BBC IPlayer has been fantastic and Swansea is still being talked about on air today, with millions more watching online, firmly placing Swansea on the map as a destination which works together to deliver major events. Our own websites of www.enjoyswanseabay.com and www.swansea.gov.uk received a massive 90,000 page views for this event alone. I attended for a while on Saturday and was thrilled by the comments of Radio 1 Controller Ben Cooper and his praise for our teams.

 

The Singleton Park setting, the weather and the obvious enjoyment had by all those lucky enough to have tickets was perfect and I am delighted with the One Council approach to delivering this major event. My sincere thanks goes out to the team of staff who helped to make it a huge success, both inside and outside of the park. The BBC and the reporting national media have been singing our praises and we hope that this relationship will bring many more events to Swansea in the future.

2018 is proof that Swansea is the biggest stage this summer and we still have so much more, music, sport and cultural events to look forward to, so please check out www.enjoyswanseabay.com

Trip Advisor

I was delighted to hear that five council-operated venues –  Brangwyn Hall, Oystermouth Castle, Dylan Thomas Centre, Grand Theatre and Swansea Museum – have each been recognised with a Trip Advisor 2018 Certificate of Excellence, based on the consistently great reviews on the world’s largest travel site.

Only select businesses receive a Certificate of Excellence so it’s a great achievement by our staff.

Thanks to all of them.

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.

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.

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!

High 5s are open

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We launched the 2018 High 5 Awards at Seaview School this week.  It was a lively event with excellent contributions from our Ambassadors Leon Britton from the Swans and Siany from The Wave.  As usual Cyril the Swan made a typically erratic contribution leaving me with a sense of impending doom as he paraded round the school hall.  Thankfully we avoided any mishaps and were treated to a video made by the school of what winning the award has meant for them. It’s the seventh High 5 competition and it was clear that winning last year had made a huge impact on the children and teachers at the school.  In fact, I hardly recognised Seaview from my last visit two years ago.  Julie Dunn, supported by her team, the pupils, our NEAT team and a dedicated group of officers across the Council have transformed the outdoor environment.  One of the teachers, Sian Davies, explained enthusiastically what a difference this has made to teaching and learning activities in the school and the appreciation of the environment by the children.  Everyone involved in this work at Seaview should feel proud and I’m very grateful. I’ll be pushing for nominations for this year’s awards so please try to think of young people who’ve inspired you by their achievements, particularly (but not exclusively) those who have to overcome obstacles in doing so.

Senior Management Review

Over the coming weeks I’ll be in discussions with senior colleagues about our senior management structure and the need to make changes given the new challenges we face and the need to make further reductions in management costs.  I’ll say more about this following our initial consultations. You may also be aware that Chris Sivers, our Director of People, is leaving to become Director of Children, Adults and Health at South Gloucestershire Council. Chris will probably be with us until late July. She’s been a really valued member of CMT and a trusted colleague and I’ll pay full tribute to her as we approach her departure.

Prevent

At Leadership Team this week we received a presentation on Prevent and the kind of issues that many cities face from extremism. We need to work with other agencies to stop radicalisation in its many forms. It’s another one of those issues where our front-line staff may become aware of potential problems. Many of our school-based staff have been trained and it’ll be good to raise awareness among all our staff.

Jobs blow

Whilst at Leadership Team the news about Virgin Media closing its Swansea call centre began to break and I held discussions with their Head of Public Affairs. The loss of 770 jobs is awful news for those involved and the local economy. They’ve been in Swansea since 1991 and I have to say this is a short-sighted decision at a time when we have the City Deal skills and digital projects coming forward. We’ll be doing everything we can to persuade Virgin Media to reverse the decision during the 45-day consultation. Failing that, we’ll be working with the Welsh Government and our major employers in the city to try to find jobs for the affected staff.

Top marks

This week Estyn published its inspection report on Olchfa School and it makes for very impressive reading. It praised the school’s inspirational leadership, innovative and quality teaching and its consistent focus on developing pupils as confident and ambitious leaners. Olchfa is our second comprehensive school to be judged excellent in all five inspection areas this year, following on from Bishopston. I’d like to congratulate long-serving headteacher Hugh Davies and his leadership team, as well as all the staff, pupils and everyone associated with the school.

Pride

Swansea’s first Spring Pride is taking place on Saturday with a parade and entertainment at the National Waterfront Museum.  Foster Swansea and our own Staff LGBT+ Group will be taking part.

Lord Mayor’s Awards

I’m looking forward to next week’s Lord Mayor’s Summer Ball where a number of our citizens will be recognised for their contribution to our city’s well-being.  On Tuesday a number of us recorded testimonials at the Mansion House which will be played at the event next Thursday.  I hope many of you are able to join us for the evening which will raise money for the Lord Mayor’s Charity.

Honours announced so far are:
Services to sport – Enzo Maccarinelli, Anne Ellis
Services to trade & investment – Chris Foxall
Services to theatre – Ria Jones
Services to music – Dave Cottle
Services to broadcasting – Mal Pope
Services to political life – Ali Thomas
Services to media – Blanche Sainsbury
Services to tourism – Professor Terry Stevens
Lord Mayor’s choice – Brett Johns
Services to charity – Nizar Dahan
Services to children – Terry Bravin
Lord Mayor’s entrepreneurial award – Dawn Lyle of Icreate
Services to regeneration – Debbie Green, Coastal Housing
Services to Swansea’s brand – Nigel Short
Swansea’s international ambassador – Alun-Wyn Jones