Creating and taking opportunities

What a wonderful week of glorious weather! I will start at the end of my week with the powerful and beautiful poppies on Hove Lawns which I was able to enjoy as I travelled to the Chamber of Commerce breakfast this morning.

poppies on Hove lawns

I had been invited as the guest speaker and the challenging topic was my career and journey to the role of chief executive of Brighton & Hove City Council. It was a pleasure to meet so many people from businesses in the city. I hope people took away the themes of partnership, creating and taking opportunities, and the importance of authentic relationships in work as well as life.

Chamber of Commerce breakfast

Working to achieve the city’s potential
The work of Nick Hibberd and his team in supporting the development our economy and providing city council leadership is vital, and it’s worth noting that the team have been involved in the allocation of £83.4 million worth of projects within the Greater Brighton area. 
 

Head of City Regeneration, Nick Hibberd

There are also lots of positives for Brighton & Hove in terms of the economy, we are the second fastest for growth in the private sector and third highest level of business start-ups. Our employment rate is improving and currently stands at 71.9%. We have the lowest job seekers allowance claimants rates since 2006 standing now 4.407. All this said there is absolutely no room for complacency and working with businesses of every size will become increasingly important as we work to sustain and achieve the city’s potential and to be able to have local government public services that are increasingly self-sustaining.

Next corporate plan and budget
Today’s event follows two days of intensive working together by the Executive Leadership Team on options and proposals for the next corporate plan 2015 – 19 and the budget for next year. As we all know our challenge is a significant one and this week we have put out briefing information for staff giving more details of that. Our away day however, was not down beat but rather we are determined to come up with options that respond to the world in 2014. We want to make the most of digital and media opportunities and have a profound commitment to work with public service organisations, business, community and voluntary sector.

Executive Leadership Team at Plumpton College

Truthfully the world is not going to stay as it is and the shape and world of local government is not going to remain static, however we are determined to put outcomes for citizens at the front of our proposals and opportunities for staff are at the heart of our thinking. That well may mean opportunities to work in different ways and possibly different organisations in the future.

Our room at Plumpton College

Our away day was at Plumpton College, and Principal Des Lambert and his staff certainly know a thing or two about customer service. They provided a bright and airy room for our work with good value catering and Des even took us on a tour of the farmland around Plumpton College up on the Downs. This college has been in existence since 1919 when it was developed to support self-sufficiency in agriculture. It now takes 4500 students from all over the country and provides practical training in all sorts of farming and land based skills including viticulture and blacksmithing. Its land oriented education is very affecting and it was good to be working surrounded by horses, fields and cattle for a change.

The surrounding fields

 Discussions with the trade unions and with senior councillors will be taking place over the coming days and weeks and I continue to appreciate the emails from individuals about how we can do things better, differently and more economically. Please keep your suggestions coming.

A proud moment

My daughter's graduation

My third event this week came on Tuesday when I took a day’s leave to celebrate and witness my daughter’s graduation. Not only was it a proud moment for her and all her family but also for hundreds of other families at Kings College, London who were also heading out into the wild world of work, and the challenges of finding a worthwhile way to make a living and contribution to society. Her hard work and determination to make the best of her abilities have borne fruit. I am determined that this should be the case for all our young people in education, whether at school or university and this will continue to be a key priority for the council.

Kings College, London

So enjoy the fantastic weather and thank you to those who will be working in clammy conditions over the weekend.

Talent and Ambition

What fantastic talent we have in our young people. This week has been a complete treat because in among all of the important meetings with members, managers, our partners (police and health), two stand out events have taken place.

Our fantastic young people

Brighton Youth Orchestra at All Saints Church

Last Friday night at All Saints Church in Hove I was privileged to hear the most fantastic concert by Brighton Youth Orchestra. This was the last leg of their European tour and they were on fantastic form. About 90 musicians conducted by Andy Sherwood, gave us a wonderful eclectic programme that included a piece called Pines of Rome by Respighi, who I had never heard of, as well as more well-known Shostakovich and Elgar ending with a wonderful lively rendition of Lord of the Dance. The sheer musicianship and enthusiasm combined with the wonderful acoustics of the church made it a truly fantastic end to a long week.

Then on Tuesday night we were able hear the summer jazz night by Brighton Big Band. Again it was a fantastic evening displaying more talent, enthusiasm and a wonderful programme of modern and traditional jazz, this time conducted by Brighton & Hove Music Arts very own Peter Chivers.

Brighton Big Band

Lewis and Ash in Brighton Big Band

 

Continuing with the theme of Young People and their talent and ambition, earlier in the week Pinaki Ghoshal and I were at a meeting at BACA (Brighton Aldridge Community Academy), discussing the progress that the school is making and the fantastic offer that it provided both in educational terms and sporting opportunities. Looking out on their wonderful playing fields, it is a shame that this school is not yet fully occupied and I very much hope that over the coming years the numbers will grow to capacity so that the educational and sporting offer reach the maximum number of young people.

 

Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA)



Dorothy Stringer pupil Ciara Dunne and her dad Theo

On Wednesday, a Dorothy Stringer pupil Ciara Dunne had come to work with her dad, Theo as part of a “Take your children to work” initiative by the school. Theo works in the childcare workforce development team supporting early years services, and asked if Ciara could come and meet with me briefly. I hope she enjoyed her day and learnt a great deal more about the value of public service and the importance of living our values, every day. I certainly enjoyed meeting them and Theo’s manager Andrew Parfitt.

Then today, I met Issie Morgan, daughter of Nicky Cambridge, policy development officer, who is also at Dorothy Stringer who joined us for a meeting in my office.



Me with Martin Warren, Issie, Corinna Allen and Thurstan Crockett

Celebrating Rise’s work

 

With Gail Gray, Rise's chief executive

This week the charity Rise, whose strap line is “Freedom from domestic abuse”, celebrated 20 years of providing sanctuary and support in Sussex. Many of us were invited to join in a celebration at Donatellos early in the week and I was pleased to be part of those celebrations and to recognise the important work of Rise with women, children and families. I have come to know Gail Gray, the organisation’s chief executive quite well.  I am always impressed by her knowledge, commitment and calmness in the face of  the challenging work that the organisation does. They have recently won the GSK 2014 Impact Awards, and if you look at the video here you will see of something of why. The short piece of work that Rise has done with the health service and particularly the ambulance service to identify victims of domestic abuse is particularly interesting.

Preston Barracks regeneration scheme

Away from the music, Rise celebrations and many meetings, this has been a week of positive announcements for the city including the closure of the deal to sell and develop Preston Barracks, a site that has been ripe for development for a considerable time. I am delighted with the work that has been done with developers, university and by colleagues in the council who have worked tirelessly.  I look forward to this regeneration scheme joining a number of others to help to keep our city vibrant and developing.

 

Preston Barracks site

Our budget for next year and the Corporate Plan

Of course, all of this work is taking place while we focus on our funding gap next year and beyond.  We are developing a Corporate Plan to cover 2015-2019 and will be talking to staff, partners, residents, businesses and other stakeholders about their priorities for the council and the city within the context of the financial challenge we are facing.  The impact of the enormous gap of around £25million a year for the next four years cannot be underestimated.  A briefing sheet and information is being prepared and everyone should make sure that they understand the impact the funding reductions will have. 

Finally if you read this before Friday night, do consider going to hear the Brighton and Hove Actually Gay Mens Chorus who are singing in St Andrews Church on Waterloo Street on Friday and Saturday evenings. Returning from the big band on Tuesday night we had the unexpected delight of hearing the chorus rehearsing and as ever the sound was magnificent and enticed us in from the pavement. I will also be returning to look at St Andrews, which is a beautiful church, here is a picture to tantalise you.

St Andrews Church
 

Enjoy your weekend.

Penny

An week of inventive and involving work

Our unique festival

Last weekend saw the inventive Paddle Round the Pier seaside festival and it was a delight to visit on both days. 

One of the races at Paddle Round the Pier

Our wildflowers on Hove Lawns

As well as tasting the delights of an impromptu lunch with Karl from Moshimo, I also took advantage of our newest seafront loos as I walked towards town. It has been pointed out since that I took a loo selfie! 

My loo selfie

All I wanted to do was to capture and share with people the brightness and quality of the newest addition to our public conveniences. It was good to meet the proud temporary attendant Rob Short who works for Wettons. 

Rob Short at the new loos

And on Sunday our Cityclean paddling crew did a good job and raised over £500 for charity. Well done to them.

The cityclean team 

Paddling round the Pier

Reimaging the Royal Pavilion estate

On Monday I met with the Pavilion café’s David Sewell and the Friends of the café as we grouped to re-apply for funding to invest in the whole of the estate that is the Pavilion, Dome, Corn Exchange, Museum and gardens. We intend to be inventive and involving as we reimagine this uniquely beautiful and extraordinary heart and lungs of our city.

Friends of the Pavilion cafe with Janita Bagshaw and me

Local Government annual conference

Then on Tuesday it was off to sunny, sandy Bournemouth with Jason, leader of the council to join the local government family for its annual conference. At this time of recession it is important to take opportunities to learn and share and the conference gave us plenty of that. 

Simon Stevens, chief executive NHS

Members and chief executives from North and South and East and West of the country came together to be inventive and to involve one another in sharing how we can respond to the challenges of reducing resources, increasing demand and rising expectations. The conference was characterised by generosity, optimism, collaboration and creativity. The Innovation Zone was a safe space for sharing, the conference provided platforms for discussing problems and new initiatives especially focussing on the opportunities of digital and the importance of outcomes over traditional service arrangements. We picked up ideas such as solar rubbish bins.

Jason Kitcat and one of the solar rubbish bins

There was intelligence in the form of a Ipsos MORI survey (PDF 1.42MB) of latest perception. There was no end of information. And we had the opportunity to meet new and key players especially Simon Stevens the NHS Chief Executive from April. He led a full session and a private session on the leadership challenge and opportunities for collaboration with local government and the NHS.

Ben Page from IPSOS Mori

Along the way I met up with long standing friends in local government and made new ones. Listening to stories of inventiveness and involvement and taking heart for our challenges. What is absolutely clear is that we need to work differently, embrace more change and be ever clearer about our purpose, priorities and partnerships, to ensure the best outcomes for our place; the fabulous city of Brighton & Hove.

Our Big Difference winners

I am now back at base and delighted that today we have awarded the winners for the Big Difference Awards for exceptional work and they are Martin Reiley from Cityclean, who went out of his way to help a resident track down stolen items and the team who worked on our first same sex marriages in March. It was very interesting to hear from all the staff who were shortlisted and is never an easy decision to make. Everyone who gets on the shortlist is a winner in their own right. There will be more about the winners on the Wave next week.

The shortlisted staff for the Big Difference awards

As always enjoy the weekend. 
Penny

Named top council for tackling homophobia in schools

Number one council 
This busy, sunny week is ending on a positive note with the announcement that we have been named the top council for tackling homophobia and bi-phobia in schools by Stonewall.  The partnership work between schools, our local charity Allsorts Youth Project, co-ordinated by Sam Beal has led to this really positive outcome. 

One of the schools particularly highlighted was Blatchington Mill for a student equality conference earlier this year, attended by 60 students from five secondary schools and St Nicholas’ primary school for the innovative work that it’s done in challenging the use of homophobic language in the playground. 

Me with Janet Felkin, Blatchington Mill head

Grease is the word
Well done to everybody involved in this; it’s really important for the present and the future culture of our fair and fabulous city. Talking of Blatchington Mill, Pinaki Ghoshal, executive director of Children’s Services and I attended their lower school production of Grease last night and the energy and enthusiasm of more than 100 students involved was palpable. The pleasure from the audience was equally noisy and the dancing was enthusiastic and memorable.

Blatchington Mill production of Grease

An inspirational morning
Any production requires tremendous collaboration and team work and that was something that we heard about and worked on in our Senior Managers Forum earlier this week. One hundred and sixty senior managers came together and heard from the academic and business leader, Margaret Heffernan. Margaret talked about her research on wilful blindness and collaboration. She particularly focused, at our request, on what makes an effective and open culture and allows people to speak up when they need to. We also spent time working on what makes a really great team, one that produces the best possible outcomes for citizens and supports its colleagues to give of their best. 

Margaret Heffernan and me at the forum

Many people have come to me since Tuesday and said what a valuable and inspirational morning they spent learning about the bystander effect and having reinforced for them the importance of helpfulness and openness. You can find out more about Margaret and her work and look at her TED Talks if you’re interested. This session is one example of actions coming from the staff survey – in this case working on management capability. And this blog, of course, is part of improving our internal communications and the culture of openness. 

Cityclean at Paddle Round the Pier
Another example of collaboration will be the Paddle Round the Pier that takes place this weekend.  I am delighted to say that many of us are sponsoring a Cityclean crew who have created a raft from wheelie bin, palettes and other recycled items.  They will be raising money for local charities and they will also be running a stall at the event to promote and encourage recycling.  Good luck to them; I’ll be watching.

Tracey, Emma and Michael on Bin Floatin

A real boost
I was delighted to meet Stella Bowser on my way to work this morning. Stella is one of our street cleaners and she regularly recycles much of the material that she picks up. I found her in conversation with Elaine Sweetman from HR, who for a considerable time was based at the Learning Centre at Cityclean. Seeing recycling in action and hearing the enthusiasm of two of our women members of staff gave me a real boost as I came into work, a bit late admittedly!

Elaine and Stella on my way to work

A real community building
I found similar enthusiasm for work when I visited Woodingdean library yesterday. If you haven’t been there Woodingdean library is a brand new purpose built building, sharing premises with a doctors’ surgery and it was great to talk to managers and staff about the services on offer there.

Pat Grant and Linda Wilmshurst in Woodingdean Library

Two things struck me particularly, apart from the stunning openness and brightness of the building. One was the absolute commitment from staff to make the building a building for the community. It’s available to groups and services who want to use some of the facilities on offer as much as those who want to borrow books or use the many and well used computers. The second thing that struck me was that there is potential to get even more benefit from this building; which at the moment is only open as a library three days a week. The openness and enthusiasm of staff and managers to think about maximising the benefits from this fantastic community and city resource were really uplifting.

Lucy Day who's helping with the Summer Reading challenge

Another Cityclean worker!
Finally, earlier this week I met ………….. another Cityclean worker! Ryan Talbot is on a temporary contact at the moment and has just been trained to use the ‘electric Glutton’, which is essentially a street hoover. He was delighted to stop and show me the machine and how it works and to tell me that he enjoys working for the council, making our city a cleaner and safer place and hopes very much to have a permanent role. At the moment he’s on a fixed contract and operates as a 'floater' in central streets and Hove. 

Me with Ryan and the Glutton

Big and courageous ideas needed
Amidst all this activity and vibrancy, I have been working with colleagues, and in discussion with Members, on early planning for our next year’s budget and the Corporate Plan. It’s absolutely clear that we face an ever tougher challenge than in previous years. The gap between what we are currently spending and what we will have to spend next year and subsequent years is growing ever bigger. We are going to need some big and courageous ideas which go beyond getting best value from what we currently do to thinking about doing things differently and possibly stopping doing some things. We want there to be open discussion about the challenges before us with staff, with the community and voluntary sector, with citizens and with our partners. We hope that through the best use of our knowledge or what works elsewhere and our prioritisation of what absolutely must be done, we will be able to come forward with a plan, but things are not going to stay just as they are. Indeed, that’s the message for the whole of local government and public services up and down the country. Individual and team ideas and proposals will be seriously received and considered.

Enjoy the sun and keep up the good work.

All the best
Penny