Message from the Managing Director

20 August 2021

Dear Colleagues,

I hope you are all well and have managed to take some time off over the summer period.

While the school summer holidays can mean quieter weeks and the chance for well-deserved time off for many office based teams, I know this time of year is often one of the busiest for many of our colleagues working in frontline service delivery.

I’d like to start this week’s message with a thanks to everyone working hard to make sure our parks, town centres, resorts, and our country parks and coastline are looking their best at this busy time of year. I would also like to say a particular thanks to our waste collection teams who I know are up against it due to difficulties recruiting HGV drivers.

I know that this is a difficulty that is being experienced across the country in a variety of services and I am also aware that other Councils are experiencing difficulties in meeting their weekly collections as a result of shortages in experienced staff.  I am very grateful to our dedicated teams who are doing their very best to maintain the service under challenging circumstances. Diolch!

One area where our colleague’s efforts are really paying off is at the Penarth Pier Pavilion. As you will all be aware one of the Council’s most high-profile projects so far this year has been the refurbishment and reopening of this much-loved attraction after it returned to the Council’s management.

This weekend will see the cinema reopen and I was really pleased to see these words in the press from the cinema operator.

“It's really good that they've taken it over, as far as I’m concerned. It’s nice having new people in there and they've got a lot of vision.

“There's a lot of excitement about what the building could be used for. I'm really lucky that they've asked me to carry on doing what I'm doing, but it's totally been a partnership.

“They’ve been fantastic in the last month to try to get that set up, so it's really exciting to be honest.”

Great to see our teams building positive relationships with local businesses like this. Gwaith da pawb!

As I mentioned last week the change to Alert Level 0 in Wales does not mean a change to current work from home arrangements or to the rules that must be followed if you do work from one of our buildings. However, I know that working from home can make it harder to strike the right work/life balance and so I’d like to draw your attention to a new Office 365 feature, that is designed to help people better manage their time.

Office 365 users should have received a new “MyAnalytics” bulletin by email earlier this week. The bulletin supplies bite-sized reports on your weekly activity.

As part of this digital wellbeing service, users also have access to MyAnalytics dashboards where they can customise some settings to suit their needs.

The MyAnalytics page on Staffnet has more information on how to make the most of this tool. I really would recommend taking the time to have a look and taking the time to think about how best to find a routine that helps you strike the right balance.

Thanks, as always to you all for your efforts this week.

Diolch yn fawr,

Rob.