Weekly Round-Up with Debbie

Dear colleagues,

With Rob on annual leave this week I have the pleasure of writing to you all with highlights from across the Council this week.

It would be remiss of me not to start with some great news from Legal Services. The Council’s legal team has once again achieved Lexcel accreditation. This is a mark of accreditation given by the Law Society to legal practices and solicitors who meet the highest standards of technical expertise and client service in specific areas of law.

The accreditation was achieved following a three-day inspection by the Solicitors Regulation Authority last week. The inspection was demanding to say the least and I am hugely proud of the whole team for going the extra mile in preparing so thoroughly and impressing the inspectors during their visit.

Achieving this accreditation once again is no less than the team deserve. As a Council we are very fortunate to have both expert solicitors and talented support staff who support work across the organisation. Their work is often done out of the limelight but Legal Services are instrumental in ensuring the Council discharges its duties, has services in place to protect the most vulnerable, and gets value for public money. Thanks greatly to you all for this vital work.

Work like this behind the scenes can have a massive impact on the communities that the Council supports but because it can feel administrative or procedural it often doesn’t get the fanfare it deserves. Another great example is the work of our Exchequer team to administer the Retail, Leisure and Hospitality Rates Relief Scheme for 2022/23.

The purpose of the scheme is to help retail, leisure and hospitality businesses by providing relief on the cost of non-domestic rates. The scheme closed at the end of March, by which time more than £3m of Welsh Government funding had been allocated to the business rates accounts of businesses in the Vale.

Knowing just how important this cash injection would be to many businesses, and what this would mean to the staff and customers who depend on them, our Exchequer team went above and beyond in proactively contacting those eligible, supporting people with their applications, chasing those they knew to be in need, even going as far as visiting the businesses where needed as the deadline for payments approached.

Thanks to their efforts the Vale of Glamorgan Council achieved the second highest performance in Wales in reaching eligible businesses, with 85% of the amount originally estimated being distributed to local businesses. Our team actually had the most accurate estimate in Wales for the amount of funding needed and this efficiency and attention to detail is something I know they pride themselves on. Most importantly hundreds of small businesses have received vital support at a hugely challenging time.

One part of my role as Monitoring Officer is overseeing Cabinet and Council meetings to ensure these are conducted in line with the Council’s constitution. One of the more significant reports to be approved by Cabinet in recent weeks came through the process this week when the Council’s draft Digital Strategy was approved for consultation.

A draft strategy, which has been so far has had input from more than one hundred colleagues, sets out a vision of “Transforming our digital culture” and of a Council “Open to new ways of working together and with the community to enhance our services. Ambitious and proud to transform our digital culture in order to unlock our digital potential”.

Once formally agreed the strategy will set a blueprint for change across the organisation for the coming years. The Council has partnered with the Society for Innovation, Technology and Modernisation (SOCITM) to develop the new strategy. SOCITM worked closely with a Council project team and as well as engagement with over one hundred Council colleagues from all directorates, regular discussions have also taken place at SLT, with Heads of Service, and at the Strategic Insight Board. All staff who haven’t yet been involved will have an opportunity to help finalise the strategy during a consultation that will launch later this month. Watch out for more information closer to the time.

At this point I’d like to give a mention and another big thank you to the other part of my service area. I have seen first-hand over the last year how challenging it is to develop new digital services as our Democratic Services team have put huge time and effort into developing a hybrid meetings process that will allow elected members and officers to join formal meetings from any location they choose. As well as making it easier for the Council to practice local democracy, a fully hybrid way of working will more importantly make it easier for residents to be part of the process.

From the start of this work, we have strived for excellence in the final product. The Democratic Services team, and those colleagues in ICT Services and Business Improvement who have supported them, must be commended for never settling for anything short of this. Thanks to their work we’ll soon begin trialling a new platform that will eventually host all Council, Cabinet and Committee meetings. It has been great work undertaken under real scrutiny and I am grateful to everyone that has helped this project progress.

If you’d like to see another great example of this Council embracing digital ways of working and new technology, then all staff are welcome to attend to one of the open days at the new Barry Library Makerspace later this month. Following the success of the Penarth Library Makerspace, which recently helped one local resident present her artwork in New York, our libraries team is shortly opening a refurbished area in Barry library which will house a range of digital design and fabrication equipment. On 19 and 20 July you can chat with the Makerspace staff, learn about the equipment and see the kinds of projects anyone can get involved with.

Another opportunity for colleagues to get involved in shaping the future will be coming soon in the form of the Council’s new Rewards and Benefits Forum. Led by our Organisational Development team the Forum will review the rewards and benefits currently on offer to staff and explore what more could be done to recognise the contributions of Team Vale, improve job satisfaction and promote their overall well-being. More information will be published on StaffNet shortly but if you’d like to register your interest in getting involved simply log on to iDev and choose the session you would like to attend. Colleagues without access to iDev should speak to their line manager.

Finally, with the end of term approaching I am sure many colleagues in schools and possibly a few pupils too will be looking ahead to the summer break. The focus of many of our colleagues in Learning and Skills, however, is on one last push for the Vale’s #MissSchoolMissOut campaign. They are working with schools to encourage pupils and their parents to make attending school every day a priority, in an attempt to bring attendance back up to above 95% across the county. This is just as important at the end of term as at the start and so if you see our campaign online, please to share to help us reach even more people.

Thank you all for taking the time to read my bulletin this week. I hope I’ve been able to shed some light on what goes on in Legal and Democratic Services while also sharing the big news of the week.

Thanks of course for all of your hard work. I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Diolch yn fawr.

Debbie.