Weekly Round Up from the Director of Corporate Resources

06 February 2026

Hi everyone, 

I’m at the steering wheel for the end of week message this week and I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about people and community, and how we are supporting our communities by listening, learning together and shaping our services for the benefit of everyone. 

This week we’ve been marking Race Equality Week. It's a global movement led by Race Equality Matters that exists for one simple reason - to keep conversations about race equality going, even when they may feel uncomfortable or easy to avoid. It’s about recognising that behind every policy, service and interaction is a person – and that feeling respected, included and safe matters. 

For some, experiences of racism and exclusion don’t stop at the workplace door. They affect how individuals feel about applying for jobs, accessing services, speaking up or asking for help.  

In our organisation, anti-racist practice is about making everyday experiences as inclusive as possible for both colleagues and our residents. As part of this, our Head of HR & Organisational Development, Tracy Dickinson and Curtis Griffin who is an assistant HR Business Partner have been leading anti-racism training for Social Services colleagues with a focus on anti-racist practice in recruitment.  

The training helps those involved in the recruitment process to reflect on assumptions, reduce bias and make sure everyone has a fair chance - so the people delivering our services better understand the communities we support. We’ll be extending the training to colleagues in Environment and Housing in the coming weeks and months.  

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Tracy and Curtis for their work in this area and to all those colleagues who’ve participated so far. 

This Race Equality Week also places emphasis on small, simple actions that make a real difference. Equalities colleagues have been encouraging us to take part in the Five-Day Challenge, and spend just five minutes a day over the course of five days reflecting on assumptions and everyday behaviours. Take a look at the info about Race Equality Week on Staffnet which has been relaunched this week, is looking great and makes finding information to help you in your work even easier (thanks Communications Team!).  

You can also learn more with the new anti-racist e-learning resources available on iDev.  

All of this is directly linked to Vale 2030 - our corporate plan - where we have committed to seek to be the best Council we can be and to protect and support people who need us, whether it’s the residents we interact with or our colleagues across the Vale. 

The work we’re doing around anti-racism and being an inclusive organisation is ultimately grounded in listening, understanding and acting on what people need to feel supported and included.  

This focus on listening also extends to how we handle complaints. On Tuesday, Head of Digital and Customer Experience, Nickki Johns, led a session with SLT and Heads of Service on taking a fresh approach to complaints, emphasising the importance of preventing issues before they arise, responding quickly and effectively, and keeping customer service at the heart of what we do.  

The session also highlighted the value of understanding data on customer feedback in individual departments and using our tone of voice guidance to ensure communications are clear, approachable, and resident-focused. 

Those same principles guide how we plan and run our services more broadly. By reflecting and listening to people’s experiences, it can help directly to shape decisions, especially as we strengthen our ability to serve our communities fairly and effectively. This is especially important as we consider how best to allocate resources to support the people who rely on us most. 

One way we are doing this is through the consultation on our budget for 2026/27.

The Council’s budget funds a huge range of services that thousands of people rely on every day.

From education, adult and children’s social care, housing and homelessness support, highways, waste and recycling, to parks, public spaces, and many other statutory and essential services what we do makes a difference to the lives of our residents. 

The budget consultation is still open until the 13th of February 2026. This is a vital opportunity to share views on how we spend the money that supports our communities.

By getting involved, staff and residents alike can help shape services that are sustainable and focused on protecting frontline and essential services. It’s one of the most direct ways we can help make a difference for the communities we serve. It was great to spend time with the Accountancy Team this week looking at how our budget is used to fund services across the five wellbeing objectives in Vale 2030, and how we will be investing in developments that both support people and create thriving places in the Vale for our residents.  

Making this difference also means understanding where needs are greatest and working in partnership to address them. Through Vale 2030, we’ve also been clear about our commitment to tackling poverty and reducing the inequalities that exist across the Vale. We’ve clearly set out the actions that we would be taking forward to address these differences. 

This also includes the 'Your Place' project through which Vale Public Services Board partners have worked to engage with communities and better understand how joint work may alleviate the experiences of poverty and deprivation.  

At the end of last year, the Welsh Government released the latest Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) for 2025, the official measure of relative deprivation for Wales. This has provided an updated picture of deprivation in the Vale of Glamorgan, with seven areas in Barry now measured in the top 10% of most deprived areas in Wales.  

As soon as we got this information we started work on in-depth analysis to better understand the data, discussing these findings with colleagues, partners and Elected Members. We will be working to use the findings from WIMD 2025 to help take forward the actions set out in Vale 2030 and shape the focus of our investment in central and eastern Barry to ensure that we are able to make the most difference where the support is needed. 

This week, colleagues from the Strategy & Insight team and I met with the Bevan Foundation to discuss how we can further support community groups taking action to support residents as well as joining up our services around what people need even more effectively. There’ll be lots more to come on this work in the next few months.  

Behind all of this are those of you who bring our commitments to life through the practical support you provide every day and that commitment and care doesn’t go unnoticed. Thank you all. 

On Tuesday, three Vale colleagues attended a Royal reception at St James’s Palace, hosted by The King and Queen, alongside the Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester. The event brought together representatives from councils across the UK to recognise the contribution that local government makes to communities. 

Rochelle Gibbons, Kath Partridge and Craig Nichol were selected to attend the event on behalf of our organisation, and the group travelled to London to attend the evening reception at the Palace. 

During the event, attendees had the opportunity to speak with King Charles and other members of the Royal Family about the work they do to support their communities with their local authorities. 

I popped into C1V to catch up with Rochelle, our Contact Centre Manager at a surprise Royal themed buffet that her colleagues had arranged to welcome her back to work on Thursday. Rochelle said: “Inside, we were welcomed with genuine warmth and respect, the Palace was so regal and absolutely beautiful. The King and Queen made a point of speaking to everyone, and it was clear how much they value the work happening in local government. 

“What really stood out throughout the evening was how often people praised the Vale’s approach to customer care, our digital innovation, our integration with Health and Social Care, and the way we consistently put residents at the heart of what we do. Hearing that recognition from others was a powerful reminder of the impact our teams make every day.” 

Thank you to Craig, Katherine and Rochelle for representing the Vale so positively, and for the continued hard work and commitment you show every day in supporting our residents and communities. Seeing our work recognised in this way is a great reminder of the impact our actions in helping people.

That’s all from me this week and as always thank you all for the care, professionalism and compassion you bring to your work to help support our communities in the Vale. Seeing not just what you do, but how you do it through our values of being open, ambitious, together and proud is greatly appreciated by myself, the Chief Executive and the rest of the Strategic Leadership Team. 

For those of you not in work, I hope you have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend. 

Diolch yn fawr, 

Tom