Hello everybody
My week began in London at the Public Health England marketing board. I sit on the board representing local government and helping Public Health England to ensure that their campaigns are locally driven, transparent and evidence led, providing opportunities for communities to engage, and are properly worked on in partnership. The strategy focuses on all of us having lives where we start well, live well and age well. One specific issue which we discussed on Monday’s meeting is a forthcoming campaign to develop a dementia friends campaign and an awareness of the needs and presence of people with dementia in all our communities. The campaign sounds as though it will be really exciting and effective and I look forward to its launch in May.
On the same day I spent the afternoon at the Ministry of Justice where again the theme was seeing the local impact of national policy, for example reoffending and the changes to probation. The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice and I are involved in a “buddying” scheme and I think that we are both benefiting from understanding national and local policy and delivery better by working together. We are seizing opportunities to share learning about running large, complex politically accountable organisations.
At Full Council last night I am pleased to say that our Corporate Plan was agreed by all members. As you know, the Corporate Plan has four priorities each of which have a number of key outcomes we want to achieve, and of course all this is being done within a finite and tight budget. I hope that you’ll find the Corporate Plan in its new presentation something that you can navigate easily and that it provides a good basis for service and team plans and indeed, your individual performance plan.
Finally let me end the blog this week reflecting on the delight I feel in Brighton & Hove being one of the first places to host a same sex marriage when it takes place at a minute past midnight tonight. What a proud moment for the city and for the country. When I celebrated my civil partnership three years ago it seemed impossible to imagine that gay marriage would be on the statute books in such a short time, or even ever. So thanks to all those from registrars, the Royal Pavilion, our civil contingencies team, our media relations team to name but a few who have made the high profile celebrations in Brighton & Hove possible, and will ensure that the night and the day tomorrow will go really well. And of course, huge congratulations to all of the couples who are getting married on the memorable 29 March 2014. Our good wishes go with them.
All the best
Penny
“I want to make a difference” is often what candidates answer when asked at interview why they would want to join public services. I am sure that that was part of my answer when I first applied for a temporary admin job in local government back in the 70s, and it was certainly still one of my motivations for applying to be Chief Executive in Brighton & Hove. Yesterday, we held the winter’s Big Difference Awards presentation. Once again we had received a good number of applications for the team award and a slightly smaller number for the individual awards. Three teams ended up being shortlisted. Firstly, Sensible on Strength, a campaign led by Sarah Cornell and Donna Lynsdale. This is an initiative started by Donna herself who wanted to do something about the high strength beers being sold to street drinkers. From this personal concern a successful campaign has been produced which has got amazing buy-in from local wholesale traders and has been turned into an accredited scheme; Sensible on Strength.
The next nomination was the Housing Needs Services team and their Housing Options manager, Justine Harris with Michael Rose and Debra O’Donovan. This team was nominated for working with some of the most vulnerable and challenging citizens in the city who require homelessness prevention and accommodation. We heard some heartfelt testimonies from individuals who had used the housing advice and accommodation service, and whose lives had been improved dramatically.
The third team nominated was the Patcham Flooding team who established the Hub in the Pub during the recent bad weather and worked with local citizens to prepare for flooding, and in one case to move a vulnerable resident. This team which comprised officers from Civil Contingencies, Social Care; Transport as well as those from other agencies and local residents were recognised by citizens locally to have had a fantastic impact. Indeed, I remember telling you about it when the Leader Jason Kitcat and I visited Patcham at the height of the rains. This was the team who won the Team Big Difference Award this time, and everyone in the room agreed that they won it on merit. Many congratulations to Robin Humphries, Paul Stanford, Louise Beecher, Corinna Allen, Jake Barlow, Mike Moon, Tim Nichols, Jeff Elliot, Maggie Moran, Kim Philpott, Marnie Naylor, Laura Scott-Smith, James Crane and Annie Sparks.
All three of the teams had demonstrably made a big difference and it was difficult to have to choose. One of the reasons why the Patcham team won was the fact that it was an across council team working with other agencies, and in partnership with citizens in a really co-operative and co-productive way. I was delighted that the Leader Jason Kitcat was able to be at the presentation and to hear the stories from all of the teams and individuals and to offer his congratulations as well.
The individual nominations were no less impressive. Unfortunately Karen Stacey, a senior care officer in Learning Disabilities services, was unable to join us. She had been nominated by her team members for working hard to make sure a move of three residence service users went smoothly. This had involved enormous personal impact and indeed she put her honeymoon on hold because of the move! We learnt that Karen often came in on her days off, worked long hours in order to meet deadlines and achieved a move which was made as smooth as possible for the residents. Her commitment and tenacity shone through. The second nominee for the individual award was Les Vickers, the adult social care payments team manager. In Les’ case he had worked tirelessly against all odds to get the adult social care electronic finance system in place ready to go live this April. As well as dealing with programming problems, having a dislocated elbow and working through the pain, undertaking long hours and work outside of work hours, during evenings and weekends, Les remained cheerful and positive. He hit the deadline with only an hour to spare! Les was the individual winner of the Big Difference Award this week and congratulations go to him. It’s encouraging to pay tribute to someone who is both in a managerial role and in what might be seen as a “back office” function. Those of you who have heard me talk of this know that for me the front line is vertical as well as horizontal. Nobody is able to provide a frontline service without fantastic support behind them from finance, IT, HR and administrative functions. Too often we only value those who carry out the face to face contact with citizens and customers and forget all those who work tirelessly to support them. Les Vickers is an example of one of those people whose actions have both introduced improved efficiency to the council and an improved service to adult social care clients and their independent providers of home care.
Congratulations to all those who were nominated and to the worthy winners of this time’s Big Difference Awards. I do hope through our individual end of year meetings to discuss our performance with our managers, that there will be opportunities to celebrate success and achievement and the difference that we’ve all made. Of course I also hope that there will be some reflection on learning and improvements we can make for the next period.
Finally, following my very productive meeting with our two principal social workers for adults and children earlier this week, I contacted Annie Hudson, the Chief Executive of the College of Social Work to invite her to come to a celebration we will plan for the Autumn. This will coincide with us taking corporate membership of the College of Social Work for the benefit of all our social workers across the city. I am delighted to say that Annie has accepted and that we will start planning the event very soon.
I do hope you all get the chance of some sunshine this weekend to help sustain you in your efforts to make a big difference for the residents of Brighton & Hove and to enjoy yourselves.
Best wishes
Penny
Hello everybody,
Starting my week at West Hove Infants School on the Connaught site was a really uplifting experience. Before I had even met the head, Wendy Harkness, I observed parents coming to help in the school and another parent dropping off packed lunches and all of them being warmly greeted by staff who knew them well. Once inside the school I was taken round to see at first hand hard working children in red tops participating in very structured learning using a learning cycle that Wendy explained to me is absolutely key to this being an outstanding school. The cycle works with the brain development of young children and stops them for brain gym exercises two or three times each lesson. I heard about the range of languages spoken in the school and observed the induction of a new pupil on his first day and in his first class. I was introduced to teachers who had been rated by Ofsted as outstanding individuals and I left after my visit absolutely encouraged by the open, inclusive and hard working approach of this school.
Open, inclusive and hardworking are words that could also describe our approach to finalising a City Deal with government which has seen the birth of the Greater Brighton region which will have as part of it a Greater Brighton Economic Board. Our City Deal was formally signed on Tuesday morning and the Minister Greg Clark came and joined with Leaders of Adur & Worthing, Lewes, Mid-Sussex as well as Jason Kitcat, our own leader. Also involved were both our Universities and a number of our businesses including The Fuse Box and Ricardo, both of whose chief executives were present. The signing took place at The Fuse Box in New England House, which is going to benefit from funding as part of City Deal to really help inject even more energy and resource into our growing digital industry in the city. The work that has gone on behind the scenes led by Nick Hibberd, head of regeneration and involving colleagues across the council, has been first rate and I hope they felt justifiably proud and pleased at the signing of the City Deal. I know I did.
The hard work now begins to deliver on its aspirations and I have every confidence that we will do that with continued spirit and enthusiasm. Some of those same colleagues were part of the team of us who went to LGC Awards on Tuesday night and while we didn’t win the National Award for Economic Growth, which was a prize taken by Hackney, we should take heart at having been shortlisted and being among a worthy list of authorities. I hope we will fare better on future occasions.
I have mentioned before that partnerships are absolutely key to the work that the council does to deliver for the city and this week the Leader Jason Kitcat and I attended our regular meeting of the South East 7 group of authorities to take forward the work together that we are combining on in areas as diverse as IT, Waste and Highways. One of the outcomes of this week’s meeting was that we agreed we should be working together more in other areas for example sharing our approaches and cooperating in the areas of Health & Social Care Integration and service improvement right across the board. Those discussions are yet to be held but I hope that we will continue to work well with our partners in Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Medway.
Just a small reminder that I am now well on with the end of year reviews with ELT members, both recognising this year’s achievements and planning objectives for next year. I hope that for all of us, these end of year reviews and PDPs will be a good opportunity to reflect, celebrate, learn and plan; and if yours isn’t in the diary yet, please take this as a prompt.
Finally, its World Social Work day on Tuesday 18 March. I will be meeting our principal social workers of Children (Ellen Jones) and Adults (Richard Cattrell) on Monday, in preparation for a celebration of one of the toughest and most valuable professions we have (no bias there, really!).
Here’s hoping the fog lifts.
Best wishes
Penny
Well what a week! I cannot tell a lie, I am really looking forward to the weekend. Most of my most momentous times this week have been in the evenings and culminated in a legal budget being set on Wednesday evening after the adjournment of the previous Thursday. This was quite a relief to me and fellow senior officers because of the importance of us having the capacity to bring in necessary income to keep the council’s functions going and to be able to comply with our timetable for billing our citizens.
Last night a further momentous decision was taken by members of Policy & Resources Committee when they finally approved the scheme for funding the i360 development on the seafront. As most of you know better than I, this is a scheme that has been under development for many years and the decision last night means that we will see activity on the seafront this year, with a view to opening the tower in 2016. At this point I must pay tribute to the numbers of staff and managers who have contributed to the development of both the i360 and the budget for 2014/15. They are too big in number to mention and I hope they know how much I appreciate the work they have done in sometimes quite challenging circumstances.
To lighten my evenings this week on Tuesday night I was speaking at the launch of the programme for the Brighton Fringe. This took place in the Sea Life Centre and involved me, the director of the Fringe and another speaker standing on a platform in the middle of the shark and turtle pool! Whilst I was speaking two enormous turtles, Lulu and Gulliver, took to consummating their friendship right below the platform. Because I had listened quite intently to Alan, our guide on the platform, I knew that Lulu was 75 and that my assumptions about her being past child bearing age were quite wrong. So I was able to enlighten the audience as to these facts. You can imagine there was quite some hilarity as the whole audience witnessed the event with me providing the informed commentary! Brighton Fringe and Brighton Festival are both going to be fabulous and booking is open now - so start planning for an entertaining May.
So it has been a week of listening and presiding over significant decisions which will affect the city next year and for years to come. The challenge for all of us will be that we have got to deliver the budget and almost immediately start our service and financial planning for subsequent years which will be even more demanding.
It’s International Women’s Day tomorrow and I spoke at a Women's Forum at lunchtime on the theme of resilience. We all need to develop and find our personal and team resilience in the face of the change and challenge that is going to face us and I for one am keen to see this as an opportunity to do some things differently and to do some things better.
That’s enough for now, I’m off to visit the Martlets Hospice and then to recharge my batteries over the weekend and I hope you do the same.
Best wishes
Penny
It has been a lovely few days in Brighton & Hove. It feels like spring is here.
