Robs Weekly Round Up 

30 August 2024

Dear colleagues,

With schools starting back next week and our cabinet and committee meeting cycles also due to being again, this weekend will for many feel like the end of the summer holidays.

Rather than dwell on that I wanted to use some of my message this week to look back at some of the recent work of our teams that has made the Vale a great place for residents and visitors this summer.

As they do each year our Family Information Service curated a summer activity programme that offered something for everyone. Finding family activities at low or no cost can be a real challenge for many parents so bringing all of this information together in one place will have been invaluable for many. Combining activities led by our own teams as well as local partner organisations the programme served up everything from sport and craft sessions to rock pooling and origami lessons. Gwaith da pawb on such an excellent resource.

Teams from across the Council supported our annual Flying Start Fun Day and National Play Day events. These were totally free to all and gave thousands of children a great day out. Even if a brief downpour did send a few people home at the latter! There are far too many people involved in supporting these to list even the individual teams but special mentions must go to our Flying Start and Play teams who took the lead.

Our well known resorts at Barry Island in Penarth always attract lots of visitors at this time of year. As do our parks and country parks. The teams in Neighbourhood Services and Place managing these are busier than ever. It’s a sad fact of life that there will be some visitors who don’t respect these spaces and leave it to others to clean up after them but I know that whatever has been thrown at them our teams have done all they can to ensure visitors are greeted with clean and welcoming spaces at the start of each day. This is a year-round job but one that I know ramps up in July and August so I’d like to give a big shout out to those in these sections of Team Vale.

Our traditional resorts will always bring big crowds to the Vale. To further drive economic development in the Vale our Visit the Vale team have been working to showcase some of our hidden gems and all the rest that the Vale has to offer in terms of paid-for activities and events. This will have been a big boost to the businesses and their staff who rely on seasonal trade. Thanks all for this.

In a particularly neat innovation this summer we have been able to use some S106 sustainable transport funding to provide a free bus service along the heritage coast. As well as making it cheaper and greener for people to visit Llantwit Major, Southerndown, and Ogmore-by-sea this will hopefully also have shown many people that public transport is a viable option for most trips these days and may take a few more cars off our roads in the coming months.

Summer is always a great time to get people living more active lives and build good habits for the rest of the year. Our Transport team have been helping more people get into active travel with a series of bike clubs across the Vale. Meanwhile our Play team repeated their innovative kitbag scheme that allows families to borrow sports equipment from their local library. More great schemes from colleagues thinking outside of the box. Excellent work.

We are very fortunate to have a year-round offer of cultural and arts events in the Vale and these are particularly popular in the summer. There will have been something for everyone across our libraries and arts venues in the last six weeks. The work of over 150 artists has been featured at Cowbridge Old Hall this month alone as part of the Vale’s second biennial Open Art Competition. This work is supported by dozens of volunteers as well as our own Learning and Skills staff and will have provided many people with a gateway to the arts this summer.

This is just a small selection of the work our teams have been doing over the past six weeks. It would be impossible to show everything we do that makes a difference (although if you want to share what your team has been doing my inbox is always open). What I hope this does get across, however, is that by thinking differently and targeting our work a little more effectively we can still make the Vale a great place to live and work without having to commit large sums to showpiece events. Most importantly we are still able to provide events, services, and support that make a difference to those residents for whom without our work the summer would just not be the same.

Many of these events programmes come to an end this weekend so if you are looking for one last summer hoorah then please do check out the information on our website or from Visit the Vale.

To make attending our events and accessing lots of our services a smoother and more user friendly process in the future our Digital team are currently working to develop a Payment Strategy to improve the experience for customers paying for Council services. This will be crucial to enabling a number of Reshaping projects. All chief officers and a selection of service leads should already have been contacted directly by our Business Improvement team. If this is you then please reply before the deadline. If you haven’t had the survey but have some thoughts to share please feel free to approach the team directly.

Better sharing our improvement work is one of the ways we can ramp up the pace of change in our Council. I mentioned last week that our new Transformation team is now in place. The team will be sharing their work, what they learn, and highlighting some opportunities where colleagues can work better together on their new Linkedin account. If you’d like to know more then give them a follow.

Looking ahead to next week, on Tuesday we’ll be holding an event at the Civic Offices to celebrate the Merchant Navy. The Mayor will be leading a flag raising at 11am on 3 September. Representatives of the Merchant Navy Association will be present and all staff are welcome to attend.

Finally, I mentioned last week that our latest set of free Welsh language courses for staff will begin in September. Bookings are now being taken for these.

Learning a language is great for your mental health and wellbeing, and learning the language contributes to your personal and professional development and in turn helps us offer a better service to Welsh speaking residents. The courses are all free of charge to Council staff and you do not have to use your leave or own time to attend the courses. Please do take a look. For all those already signed up pob lwc.

Thanks as always to everyone for their efforts this week and throughout the summer. Diolch yn fawr pawb.

Rob.