Weekly Round Up with Tom Bowring

11 October 2024

Afternoon everyone,

I hope you’re well as we continue to fly through October.

Rob is currently enjoying a few days away so asked me to step in to provide his usual Friday update.

That’s something I’m only too happy to do after a busy and significant week for us as a Council. Yesterday Cabinet approved two important pieces of work that will see the Council change over the next five years – the Draft Corporate Plan and Reshaping Programme.

Rob has talked in previous updates about the Corporate Plan, which will set out the vision of how the Council will look by 2030 and beyond. The Reshaping Programme describes the changes that we’ll need to make to realise those ambitions.

This comes in the same week as we’ve kicked off the latest round of management development sessions, conversations that will play a vital role in delivering the future direction of the organisation.

I’d like to start with a thanks to colleagues in Human Resources and Occupational Development, who’ve made these sessions possible, and to the first of our managers and team leaders for coming along to learn more about major pieces of work that will underpin how the Council operates moving forwards.

Our success depends on all colleagues understanding and committing to this new approach so we can continue delivering for our residents. That’s why we’re investing time as a Strategic Leadership Team to facilitate these sessions. Those that attend will also be feeding back to their teams aso everyone’s involved in our next steps.

Attending and engaging with these sessions is a key part of achieving our goals, and I’m delighted to say that the first couple have generated a positive response, with plenty of enthusiasm and some excellent ideas.

Reshaping is a way of reinventing services that was first adopted in 2015, but with the huge financial challenges now facing the Council, there is a need to move more quickly and radically so transformation will be approached in a new way.

The new Reshaping Programme has five overlapping and interconnected themes:

• The Target Operating Model
• Service Transformation
• Strengthening Communities
• Digital Innovation, and
• Economic Resilience.

The Target Operating Model encompasses the way in which the Council wants to work to achieve optimum results. It involves making the best use of our assets, such as buildings, play areas and car parks; looking at innovative ways to generate income; empowering staff to deliver for residents and looking at new strategic ways of working both within existing teams and through greater collaboration across the organisation and with partners. It also includes the Brilliant Basics – gettingthings right every time – whether that’s in our interactions with residents, streamlining processes or achieving outcomes.

Service transformation focuses on making specific services more responsive and effective while also delivering better outcomes. A good example of this the creation of the Big Fresh Catering Company, a Council operation that was set up as a separate entity, with profits invested back into our schools or community libraries. This helps keep these facilities open through innovative partnerships between the Library Service and community groups.

Strengthening Communities is all about a partnership approach in which the Council can work alongside the voluntary and third sector, town and community councils and community groups to make a real difference at a local level. This builds on the work with communities we’ve done during covid and the cost-of-living crisis. It was great this week to meet with partners working on the Llantwit Major More Than Food Project, which came from our partnership working in the pandemic. It has now grown to support residents in Llantwit Major and the wider rural Vale with food, advice and support from a range of different organisations. It was especially good to hear from Pete in the Resettlement Team on how that team are linking with the project to support people coming to the Vale seeking sanctuary.

There is also a commitment in Reshaping to deliver the Digital Strategy, making the most of new technologies to ensure services and interactions with residents are delivered in the most efficient, accessible and responsive ways possible. This week, I heard from the Digital Team about their work with the Housing Team on the new system to support our tenants and how Microsoft 365 is being used to automate processes, freeing up time for us to be ‘more human’. There will be a lot more to come from Nickki and the team in the coming months.

We’re also looking to invest in our communities. The Economic Resilience theme shows how we’re working in regional partnerships and securing external funding to regenerate areas and create new and improved places for people to live, work and enjoy.

There will be lots to do to deliver Reshaping, and groups of colleagues are already getting already across all of the different strands.

The Reshaping themes align with the Council’s aim and overall vision to create Strong Communities with a Bright Future and our values to be: Ambitious, Open, Together and Proud.

Our vision is delivered through our Corporate Plan and over the next eight weeks we will be consulting widely on the new version to reflect the significant challenges ahead and seize the opportunities to make a difference.

Our new Plan comes at a time of change. The make-up of our communities has changed over the last decade.There’s been a pandemic, cost-of-living crisis and a number of of communities are experiencing poverty and deprivation while life expectancy varies significantly depending on where you are born in the Vale. We also have to think about how to increase the emphasis and impetus of Project Zero, our plan to be carbon neutral by 2030. This week it was a pleasure to welcome colleagues from the Future Generations Commissioner’s Office to share with them the work going on across the Council to meet these commitments.

Hearing directly from our residents is something we’re committed to and that’s why we ran the Let’s Talk about Life in The Vale survey, which canvassed over 4,000 residents’ views on a wide range of subjects. Our new Corporate Plan shows how we are listening and will be involving people more and more in the coming years. Whilst we clearly need to consider and have an awareness of these challenges, our focus has to be on the future and the many opportunities for us as an organisation to continue to transform and to make a real difference within our communities and for the benefit of our residents. The new Corporate Plan has been developed in line with the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, Welsh Government legislation designed to improve people’s lives in the short, mid and long-term.

The draft Corporate Plan is a significant piece of work and I’d like to give a shout out to Helen Moses and the whole team in the Corporate Strategy & Insight Group who have worked so hard to produce the draft. I know how hard you’ve worked and it’s very much appreciated.

Initial work on our new plan has focussed on five Draft Wellbeing Objectives, which we’ve developed through engaging with people across the Council and county. As a team our work will concentrate on:

• Creating a great place to live, work and visit
• Respecting and celebrating the environment
• Giving everyone a good start in life
• Supporting and protecting those who need us, and
• Being the best Council we can be.

Feedback from residents has been an important aspect of its development to date and included results of the 

Let’s Talk residents survey and findings from the Annual Self-Assessment.

Now we want to hear further views from anyone interested in setting the organisation’s direction from 2025 to 2030 and beyond.

That most certainly includes staff so I would encourage all colleagues to take part.

Opinions can be shared by completing an online survey, which will run from October 14 to December 8, or at one of four in-person events taking place across the Vale.

These will be held at locations in Barry, Penarth, Cowbridge and Llantwit Major, while there are also plans to consult with specific groups. You can find information about these sessions on our website and it would be great if you can share this with your networks.

As well as helping to set the organisations direction over the next five years, it would be really useful to hear ideas on how we can achieve our aims.

The success of Reshaping and the Corporate Plan relies on everyone working towards the same goals. Next week, I’m looking forward to all Operational Managers, Heads of Service and Directors coming together to get an update on these developments and the budget process that we’ll be working on over the winter. We’ll be providing more information about this in updates over the next few weeks.

Rob spoke last week about the Team Vale mindset, and that collective ethos and shared sense of purpose is more important than ever when it comes to this work.

Recently, there was an example of that commitment to delivering top quality public service from the Council Tax Team.

Rob received some really positive feedback about how quickly they were able to respond to an issue raised by a customer.

A resident wrote to him directly to praise a the team who had been “incredibly helpful” when resolving an issue for him over the phone.

Receiving messages like this is always a great reminder that we have such great colleagues who are always willing to help out those who need us. I am very aware of the pressures on our Council Tax Team and what a challenge they have to manage the huge amount of contact they have with our residents and I’m proud that they do this and deliver a great service. Diolch. ‘Being the best Council we can be’ is one of the proposed objectives for our organisation in the new draft Corporate Plan. Directly linked to this is the Brilliant Basics workstream in Reshaping and work has begun on that in the very same department this week.

Our Transformation Team is now working with colleagues in Exchequer Services, Contact OneVale and the Digital Team to review processes for services like Council Tax and Benefits. The aim is to find ways in which we can make these simpler, automate them where possible, and so free up more of colleagues’ time to support those residents who really need us.

I’d like to finish by saying a big thank you to every one of you for your efforts this week.

Rob, I and the rest of SLT never take that for granted.

Have a lovely weekend,

Tom.