23 April, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you are all well as another working week draws to a close.

This weekend will see a further easing of lockdown restrictions in Wales. With groups of up to six adults, from up to six different households, able to meet outdoors from tomorrow. This will be followed by the re-opening of outdoor hospitality from Monday.  

I know a lot of work has been done behind the scenes to prepare for this change, particularly with café and restaurant licenses being renewed and for that, I’d like to thank all staff involved.  

Last week I mentioned the staff wellbeing survey drawing to a close and although we have received just over 1,000 responses to date, we feel it is right to extend this survey for another week to allow any additional staff members to share their feedback with us. So please share the survey  with your colleagues and encourage them to respond by 30 April. Your feedback is important to us and will inform some of our recovery work so it’s important that we reach a good cross-section of staff. 

I was pleased to receive an email recently from David Blackwell, Headteacher at St Richard Gwyn school in Barry. In his email David remarked on a couple of recent achievements. Firstly, he wanted to thank some colleagues for their continued support in recent months, stating:

‘I have been lucky to work with such professional and helpful people through many different challenges. Paula Ham, David Davies, Trevor Baker and Morwen Hudson have been such invaluable support in many areas of running the school. Not to mention the help we've had with regards to flooding and buildings more recently from Lisa Lewis, Miles Punter, Mike Matthews and Sue Williams. Every time I have needed something, they have been willing to support me wherever possible, even when it may not be an easy conversation, I cannot compliment them enough for all they have done.’  

I’d like to echo David’s thanks to you all for your support.  

Secondly, David wanted to pay tribute to his PA, Caroline Robinson, who celebrated 25 years working at St Richard Gwyn this week. I’m sure Caroline will have many fond memories of her time at the school, congratulations on your work anniversary. And may I share some of David’s kind words,

‘Caroline is the heartbeat of our school and I hope she is going to be here for a few more years yet, I would be lost without her.’ 

I would also like to recognise some excellent work undertaken by Chloe Jenkins who works in the 21st Century Schools team. Chloe has undertaken to work with our schools improve our knowledge and understanding of biodiversity on our school sites and improve the state of nature on our school grounds. It’s clear from the presentation that she has pulled together that this is an area that Chloe is very passionate about and has spent time researching and working with our partners to improve the local nature agenda. Well done, Chloe, I look forward to seeing how this project progresses and I also look forward to sharing this work with our partners across the Vale of Glamorgan. 

Keeping on the theme of the environment, you may have seen that we are currently consulting on our Project Zero Climate Change plan and I’ve been watching with interest how our residents are engaging with our Twitter polls and surveys that are underway. If you would like to find out more about Project Zero, you can find some videos and more details of our plans on our website.   

Before I draw this message to a close, I would just like to mention an opportunity to join another Learning Café Question Time which I will be hosting on 28 April between 2-3pm. If you would like to attend, we ask that you please book your place and submit your questions in advance. Anyone who is interested in what’s discussed but is unable to attend will be able to watch a recording which will be available through iDev following the session. I really enjoy hearing from colleagues across the organisation about the issues that are important to you and as a Senior Leadership Team we take these into account, so please do join if you’d like to. As well as submitting questions in advance, all participants are able to ask questions through the chat function on the day. 

Have a good weekend. Stay safe, diolch yn fawr. 
Rob