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.
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| Me with Janet Felkin, Blatchington Mill head |
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.
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| Blatchington Mill production of Grease |
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.
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| Margaret Heffernan and me at the forum |
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.
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| 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!
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| Elaine and Stella on my way to work |
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.
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| 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.
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| Lucy Day who's helping with the Summer Reading challenge |
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.
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| Me with Ryan and the Glutton |
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
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