The Christmas season gets underway

Well winter is truly upon us and I don’t think you have to be religious to appreciate the advent beach huts. 

Hove seafront

Last Sunday night, our dog Merry and I took a look at the display for the 7th and found the Holly and the Ivy. 

Beach Huts advent calendar

Primary school Christmas concert

Staying on the Christmas theme, I along with a number of colleagues, many councillors and a Brighton Centre full of parents and children, enjoyed the annual primary school Christmas concert. Yet again, Peter Chivers and his team pulled off a stunning show where literally hundreds of young people from all of our primary schools across the city came together as one city children’s choir.

Primary school concert at the Brighton Centre

They entertained us with songs that we knew and songs that were being played in public for the first time. We heard two original singing compositions and one original percussion piece. As ever, the children were enthusiastic and singing heartily while behaving impeccably. A wonderful night was had by all.

Another beautiful sky

Walking to an early meeting

The next day the morning sky, as I walked to an early meeting in Brighton, was fantastic. Not for the first time I reflected  on how lucky I am to live in this beautiful city and enjoy  the visions of the sea and the sky as the sun came up. 

The West Pier

City Management Board

The City Management Board I was chairing that day is attended by the most senior managers at both universities, the police, hospital, CCG, probation and the fire service. We had a valuable meeting reflecting on the performance of the city and the ways in which we can work together better to improve the lives and wellbeing of our citizens. The board’s annual report will be shared with Brighton & Hove Connected next week. 

Health and Wellbeing Board

At the Health & Wellbeing Board on Tuesday, we agreed with health partners on the commissioning intensions of the Clinical Commissioning Group; our crisis care concordat, outlining an effective response to those with a mental health crisis; and we discussed the important issue of access to GPs and the role of primary care. 

Health and Wellbeing Board

Our commitment to personalisation and prevention is written through our Better Care Fund plan which was reported as approved by the Department of Health. 

Health and Wellbeing board

Goodbye to Catherine

Straight after the meeting we hot footed it to Catherine Vaughan’s leaving do where her 13 years’ service to the council and the city was celebrated and recognised in good style. We wish her every bit of luck and success for the future.

Catherine saying goodbye

Catherine's leaving do

Discussed by ELT

On Wednesday, at our weekly ELT (Executive Leadership Team) meeting, I was pleased to have an extensive discussion about Our Business Strategy for a Digital Age. I hope that we will soon be making very explicit some of the developments underway to improve access to services for our citizens and their ability to do much of their business with us online, if that suits them. I very much hope we will be able to pull together our contact centre arrangements and I look forward to all of us who live in the city being able to have a ‘My Account’ making dealing with the council easier. Also, at ELT, we discussed the results of the staff survey. We are working hard both to make sense of the key messages and more importantly to firm up on actions that need to be prioritised and communicated clearly, just as we did last year.

Christmas Trees

Finally for those in Kings House, you may have seen the rather strange construction that is our Christmas tree, made from rubbish found on the beach. It rather took me by surprise as I thought we were doing a Christmas tree based on a theme of moving away from paper files as part of our Workstyles initiative. Indeed I gather such a construction will be at Barts House on Monday. It’s always the little things that attract attention and become talking points. Let’s try to focus on recycling, anti-littering and working smartly in a digital age.

Kings House christmas tree

Beach rubbish being reused

 

Sharing learning

This morning I am speaking at Brighton & Hove’s Policing Leadership Forum sharing some of my learning and my approach to managerial leadership. This afternoon, Jason Kitcat the leader, and I will be in public scrutiny on the council’s budget proposals. 



Penny with colleagues from the police

Keep warm and keep well over these chilly days.

Best wishes
Penny

Edited 12 December at 1.15pm to add picture from Policing Leadership Forum

 

Reflections from our roadshows

I am covering for Penny this week as she is on annual leave, and that includes writing the Chief Executive’s weekly blog.

I thought I’d include some reflections from our staff roadshows. This week we had the last of four sessions for staff in Finance & Resources and Legal & Democratic Services and we have nearly completed them across all directorates. There’s been lots of positive feedback and people have particularly welcomed the opportunity to join in the Stop, Start, Change conversations and enjoyed hearing about service achievements.

The Stop, Start, Change conversations have been wide ranging but a common theme in our roadshows was people suggesting ways to cut down on bureaucracy, duplication and making decision making quicker and easier.

Another theme was suggestions for further income generation. This is being looked at as part of the Value for Money Phase 4 programme. The Life Events service for example has just done a comprehensive review of all its charges and some significant changes were approved by Policy & Resources Committee in October. There is however always a balancing act for new income generation or fee increases as it can create additional work and could be a distraction from the council’s core business – this is something we need to consider on a case by case basis.

Unfortunately the ongoing disruption within Cityclean was also a topic of disappointment and frustration for many. We are one council and it is important that we acknowledge that this impacts on all of us. I sincerely hope this situation is one that we can change so that we can all be proud of the services we provide to residents, businesses and visitors in our city.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to hear from a wide number of staff about service achievements over the last year and I am really proud of the difference we’ve made. There were so many people who volunteered to speak that I can’t do justice to them all here but I thought I’d mention a few things that really stuck with me:

• Lucas Petrykow and Luke Chittenden from the Architecture and Design team showing a Meridian News bulletin about the new Holland Road site for West Hove Junior School where a child said he was giving a “two thumbs up” to the design which converted the former Police Station
• Hale Ucar, our Workstyles programme manager, showing a graphic of the paper in Kings House and Hove Town Hall and how it would stretch all the way from Hove to Beijing if it was laid out end to end
• Natasha Watson from Legal Services proudly describing how her team had won the prestigious Local Authority Family Law Team of the year award and had achieved something they had previously thought was impossible in terms of radically reducing the time for care proceedings
• Two of our ICT apprentices, Riley Blunt and Trevor Lee, talking very personally about the positive impact that the scheme was having on them – they definitely got the most resounding applause from the audience and Carla Butler in HR is always looking for areas willing to take on apprentices and work placements
• Trevor Love on behalf of the Registrars service introducing a video made by Debbie Reynolds about the first same sex marriages – it was incredibly emotional and uplifting

The senior team all got asked some challenging questions in the roadshows with a question time session and we are busy preparing written responses to all those we didn’t get a chance to cover in the sessions themselves. I think the best question we got asked was, 'what difference had the Living our Values Every Day management development training made to how we did our jobs and led our services?'. I talked about how it had made me recognise the importance of giving prompt and clear feedback to people on things they had done well and also where performance needed to be improved rather than storing up those conversations for a 121 or appraisal. Others talked about the collaboration that it had promoted and the open dialogue with colleagues across a range of different services. And there was also strong feedback about how eye-opening the visits out to services and community groups had been in understanding how difficult the council can be to engage with and what we can do to simplify that.

I hope people keep asking that question to all managers who attend the training and that we make sure everyone puts the learning into practice.

Catherine Vaughan

Executive Director of Finance & Resources