Annual Self-Assessment 2022-23

7. SA5- Well-being Objectives

8. Conclusions

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SA5- Well-being Objectives

SA5.1 Education

Assessment of current performance – how well are we doing?

Education performance in Pembrokeshire continues to be strengthened and was assessed by Estyn to have made sufficient progress to be removed from the category of Local Authority Causing Significant Concern in October 2022.
Current performance in relation to Education in Pembrokeshire is now good and on a sustainable footing for further improvement in the future. Overall inspection outcomes are in line with the view of the local authority in relation to its schools and a very few schools are placed in statutory category with Estyn. Most inspection outcomes show that schools are performing well and do not require follow-up with Estyn.
Most schools inspected in the current academic year have made good progress with their focus on quality teaching in every classroom. A full range of toolkits and other resources have been delivered to all schools and a wide range of resources used to improve lessons. School to School support has been strengthened significantly, through the development of a collaborative autonomy strategy, and through improvements in how school clusters are organised. School leadership has been strengthened further with 13 out of 16 inspections in the last academic year showing leadership to be good or better.
Work to strengthen the role of the governing bodies continues and an online, digital resource has been produced to support this.
More than 60 learners now attend Seren programs to enable them to secure places in Russell Group Universities.
Implementation of additional learning needs reforms have been completed in a timely manner. The roll-out has been audited and a substantial rating agreed following review by internal audit.
The new structures of Partneriaeth are fully embedded and these are impacting successfully on areas such as schools causing concern, improving leadership and improving teaching in schools. There is a need to gather further evidence of the impact this is having on the school system.
Implementation of Band B capital schools programme continues. This has resulted in the completion of Haverfordwest High School, the completion of Waldo Williams, and the approval of the Outline Business Case for the redevelopment of Portfield Special School; work is currently progressing on compiling the Full Business Case. Construction on Ysgol Bro Penfro has commenced and will be completed by September 2024.
The Council has adopted a new Welsh in Education Strategic Plan in July 2022. This responds to the Welsh Government’s statutory requirement to have a strategy in place to have one million Welsh speakers by 2050 (Cymraeg 2050: A million Welsh speakers). The new strategy is based on a four point vision around increasing access to Welsh language provision. The WESP represents a significant strategy for the Council and all proposals contained within the draft WESP are focused on ensuring that all pupils in all areas of Pembrokeshire can access Welsh medium education and extending Welsh medium provision. Many of the proposals will have a significant impact on pupils, parents and staff in future years and stress the importance of partner organisations working within the community / post 16 education who are part of our Welsh in Education Forum. The annual WESP report has been completed and sent to Welsh Government.
Teams across the Directorate have built strong relationships with schools and listens well to staff and stakeholders, responding to them to help shape approaches. There is a culture of knowledge exchange and supportive networks.
The Early Years team continue to implement National Identified Improvement Programmes and put Welsh Government’s 10 year strategy into practice. The team provides support to the childcare sector as a whole and not just those funded. There are ongoing risks and challenges due to grant funded nature of much of this work.
The Inclusion team provides expert, specialist support in areas such as educational psychology, autism and educational welfare. The roll-out of the Trauma-informed Schools Strategy is seen as sector leading in Wales. The team works within the difficult and challenging context of the severe disruption to children’s education through the Covid pandemic which has had a detrimental impact on not only academic progress and acquisition of knowledge, but also on children and young people’s social and emotional development across all age ranges. Additionally the cost of living crisis has negatively impacted on the resilience of families. Pressures on schools budgets and continued rising demand for specialist places presents another significant challenge.
In terms of Youth and Community Education, latest figures show the reach of the youth service is at 13.1% of the 11-25 population, compared to a Welsh average of 12.1%. Youth service contacts are also above the Wales average (13.6 per young person compare to 9.2). Learning Pembrokeshire enrolments for autumn term 2022 have increased overall by 1563 when compared to Autumn Term 2021 (1,476 to 3,039). First Time Entrant data indicates return to pre-pandemic levels of youth crime which mirrors wider issues related to social and emotional development seen by other services, though youth custody levels remain comparatively low.
Welsh for adults enrolments are down by 140 when comparing autumn 2022 (980) to Autumn Term 2021 (1,120), though to some extent this can be explained by the return to classroom delivery from on-line only.
The Director of Education is the Council’s lead for safeguarding across the authority, supported by a Member Champion. A whole-authority Safeguarding Group is established and meets on a regular basis.
Key work over the past 12 months includes implementing the action plan in respect of 2021-22 Audit Wales report and reviewing the Corporate Safeguarding Policy.

Evidence – how do we know?

Improvement actions – what can we do better and how?

Implement a range of initiatives to ensure quality teaching in every classroom, promoting and supporting evidenced-based approaches to teaching and learning, and curriculum development.
Create high expectations in improving standards for all pupils, including a strong focus on the most disadvantaged (e.g. implementing the Raising Attainment for Disadvantaged Youngsters programme; peer tutoring for eFSM pupil; expanding opportunities at KS4&5; refining Seren provision for most able and talented and eFSM pupils).
Strengthen school leadership - through a focus on professional development and promoting access to regional programmes; improving approaches to self-evaluation, planning and quality assurance; supporting leadership is smaller schools to mitigate against recruitment challenges through greater use of federations where appropriate; providing targeted leadership support for schools in categories/causing concern; and implementing a strategy to attract, place and develop governors (professionalisation of governors).
Strengthen cluster working and school-to-school networking – through ensuring all schools are part of school improvement networks; further strengthening regional ways of working with the newly formed Partneriaeth region; and refreshing and updating the partnership agreement between the local authority and schools.
Improve the use of data and information through implementing Power BI and reviewing and updating approaches to school performance data and reports in line with new school improvement guidance from Welsh Government.
Deliver our overarching strategy for improvement in education centred on five key themes (learner pathways / curriculum / entitlement, excellent health and well-being of learners, 21^st century learning environment, education workforce and partnership working) and which provides the strategic focus for all of the Directorates work. For full detail on the improvement activity for each of these key themes see ‘evidence’ section above for the full strategy.

Current performance - 3

Improvement phase - 2

2021-22 performance - 3

2021-22 improvement phase - 2

SA5.2 Social Care

Assessment of current performance- how well are we doing?

A detailed Director of Social Services report is produced annually and the report for 2022-23 will be going through its final approval process at the same time as this self-assessment.
The legislative framework for social care is the Social Services and Well-being Act. This emphasises user voice and user control and remains the long term vision for the service. Our model of service delivery is about building on the strengths of our people - the Signs of Safety approach – which is being implemented across the Directorate.
The term ‘crisis’ is often overused, and it is an accurate description of that state of social care and the health service in 2022-23. Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee has considered reports on the stress of the social care and health system (see meeting of 8 September 2022 in evidence section below).
Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) undertook a performance evaluation inspection of both Children’s and Adult Services in April 2022. The broad findings were that the Council has been experiencing a challenging social care context in common with other local authorities across Wales with increased volume and complexity across the service coupled with a workforce supply challenge. CIW found, through staff responses to the inspection activity, that meeting the demands of high workload within the current staffing situation is having an adverse impact on workers’ ability to promote the well-being of children and adults.
Recruitment and retention remains a fundamental challenge. A number of initiatives have been put in place to create a revised workforce structure that reflects the increased demands on the service (see Workforce Planning SA2.4).
Overall there was an increase in demand for both adult and children’s social care. There are a number of facets to this:

Demand by customers is increasingly for more complex social care services, resulting in more hours per customer, though the impact of this is not necessarily evident when purely looking at the amount of new contacts as numbers are reducing (Adults: 4,382 for 2022-23 compared with 5,216 for 2021-22 and Children: 4,512 for 2022-23 compared with 4,690). There has also been a reduction in the number of telephone contacts via the Contact Centre.
The combined numbers of contacts and Multi Agency Referral Form submissions into our child care assessment team was 6,828 in 2021-22. This is represents a more than a 100% increase over the course of four years. Over the same period there has been no increase in staffing capacity to deal with this increase in workload. This has an inevitable impact on the quality of work, a point which has been reflected by CIW.
Current figures show that the number of young people looked after (children in care) is in excess of 240 which is the highest number Pembrokeshire has seen. In the summer of 2022 the figure was at 226 and immediately prior to the pandemic, the figure was 184.
The total number of new assessments completed for children during the year increased to 1,876 in 2022-23 from 1,674 in 2020-21 and the number of children who had a care and support plan in place rose to 605 from 507 in 2020-21.
Demand for domiciliary care is proving difficult to meet and the average wait for domiciliary care has risen from 34.6 days in 2021-22 to 51.2 days in 2022-23. This is despite of the number of hours delivered reducing from over 8,000 hours a week to 6,500. By contrast the average length of time taken to move into residential care has reduced from 8.6 days in 2021-22 to 5.7 days in 2022-23.
The backlog of demand for adult social care assessments increased during the first part of 2022-23 peaking in July 2022 with almost 750 people waiting for an assessment of need and 173 adults waiting for a domiciliary care package. Numbers subsequently reduced to 409 and 58 people respectively in March 2023, largely as a result of Operation Nightingale 23 (see below) as well as recruitment and improvement in processes. Whilst this reduction is welcome, it is still high in comparison with figures pre-pandemic.
The increase in preventative services and extended range of organisations which are able to provide quality information advice and assistance means that just over 20% of contacts to social care from adults or children result in a statutory service being provided.

Operation Nightingale 23 was an emergency operational response necessitated by delays in the completion of assessments in hospital settings, leading to delays in discharges of patients into the community prompted by winter pressures (e.g. increase in ‘flu and other respiratory illnesses) . The short term aim of this work was to rapidly discharge medically fit hospital patients, with appropriate levels of care and support. The costs to the Council for 2022-23 of £0.593m were met from the Social Care Equalisation reserve. The project was stood down in July 2023 - see Cabinet report of 13 February 2023 for further details. This project has also strengthened joint working with Hywel Dda University Health Board and integration with the health board.
We aim to reduce the number of people waiting in acute hospital beds and manage winter pressures by: supporting our care providers, particularly controlling infectious diseases such as flu; encouraging the development of more care provides including micro-enterprises and by growing our own domiciliary care service; opening of Martello House an eight bed intermediate care facility; embedding of the intermediate care team who are able to provide a rapid response service to prevent people coming into hospital and maximising community support available.
There has been continued implementation of innovative, community based ways of delivering social care that have greater resilience and offer customers greater choice. Examples include expanding Shared Lives Carers (a Care Inspectorate Wales regulated model of care) where the carer lives within a customer’s home, and encouraging care micro-enterprises for instance with the support of the Regional Integration Fund. We also responded to an Audit Wales report 'A Missed Opportunity – Social Enterprises' which looked at how Councils can optimise how they work with the social enterprise sector.
Within the context of the Market Stability Report which regional partners agreed in June 2022, the Council started the process of re-commissioning domiciliary care services that incorporates a place based approach (saving travel time for carers). We successfully applied for an 18 month Bevan Foundation funded project to consider and develop a more flexible option to support staff working across regulated boundaries of residential and community based service which complements this place based approach. The tender will be let during 2023-24.
There has been an increase direct payments over the past 12 months. Since coming in house two years ago Direct Payment service users have increased by nearly 150. The service provides a cost effective and customer centred alternative to commissioned care at home. The total hours of care delivered by Direct Payments now exceeds those for commissioned services. (February 2023, 7,243 hours compared to 6,454 hours). The new payroll and managed banking systems for Direct Payments will reduce the amount of time staff need to make manual transactions and a customer portal will enable people to submit timesheets directly into the system.
We continued to develop and strengthen a preventative framework with communities. The Community Hub (a collaboration between the Local Authority, PAVS, Health and third sector organisations) was formally launched in June 2022 and is providing a single point of access responding to wellbeing queries and needs in the community. The Hub responded to over 1860 enquiries, and worked alongside over 670 people to find community solutions to their problems. Practical examples of the work undertaken includes the county's community response to: the resettlement of Ukraine refugees; the cost of living crisis (Keep Warm Keep Well campaign) and activities to support people with dementia across the county on a regular basis as well as supporting Operation Nightingale 23. The Community Hub and Active and Connected Communities work has also been recognised as good practice and reached the finals of the MJ Awards Innovations in Partnerships category.
Supported employment opportunities have been maximised, for instance by increasing social enterprise activities without increasing cost and by using Access to Work funding where appropriate. Norman Industries now offers supported employment in eight distinct areas of work and over 74 people with disability or long term health condition have been employed as part of the programme. Employment opportunities include two cafes (one in the Riverside Shopping Centre, Haverfordwest and one in Scolton) and substantially increased their income in 2022-23.
Day opportunities continued to be developed and referrals for day opportunities have now returned to pre-Covid levels. There are currently 54 (up from 30 previous year) people attending for a day opportunity on average six hours each per week. The estimated cost saving of this is over £250k (up from £130k previous year). In addition two groups attend for work experience from Portfield School.
A new Dementia Strategy was agreed Cabinet January 2023. The strategy sets out a West Wales vision for dementia services, to ‘Support each person to live well and independently with dementia for as long as possible’.
Reablement projects are on-going such as the Haverfordia House redevelopment (a planning application was submitted in January 2022) This facility is expected to comprise a mix of 12 en-suite reablement units and 25 over 55’s sheltered housing apartments. Although the number of reablement packages of care delivered increased to pre-COVID levels, there was a significant decline in the number of people no longer requiring care and support after reablement. This decline is as a result of customers’ increased complexity of need.
The Council temporarily closed Holly House, our respite provision to children with disabilities, in January 2023 following an inspection. The inspection by Care Inspectorate Wales found that the service was in breach of regulations in many key areas, and some of the issues observed were concerns which had not been dealt with since the last inspection in 2019. The temporary closure reflected the extent of the work required to bring the service up to an acceptable standard for re-opening, as the development of and delivery of a comprehensive improvement plan saw the need for work to be carried out across all areas of the service including procedures, staffing and environment. Additional short-term external resource was recruited to drive forward the improvement plan, and an internal improvement panel established to provide scrutiny to the journey towards re-opening.
In order to reduce the number of children coming into care and to find more stable arrangement for children in care the Council piloted a Special Guardianship Order which has proved to be effective and a paper was considered at a recent Cabinet meeting in relation to this. The policy has the potential to reduce the number of children currently in care by around 10%.
The Council has purchased a 4 bedroomed detached property to provide in-county care for children who present with such challenging behaviour that they may be at risk of requiring a secure placement. The property is currently undergoing extensive building and refurbishment work and plan to recruit staff to the service by the end of 2023.
Improved recruitment of foster carers to ensure children are placed closer to home has been partially successful. While we have improved the conversion rate for fostering enquiries to assessment and approval, our rate (7.7%) still remains below the national rate for conversion which is at 11.7%. We have not met our target for completed approved for 22/23 largely as a result of capacity due to huge increases in demand for kinship assessment. The pilot Foster Carer Building Grant Scheme will already have made savings based on a comparison to the cost of alternative residential and/or private agency foster carer.
Upgraded case management system was in place for Adult Services in September 2022. Teams have embraced the work flow functionality and generation of task lists which facilitates a smooth transfer of cases, monitoring of workloads and tracking of tasks being delivered against target waiting times Roll out to Children’s Services has been delayed due to the support team prioritising data for Operation Nightingale.
The Council’s Head of Children’s Services is the lead for the Council on work to reduce poverty in the County, with strong links to the objectives set out in the Public Services Board’s (PSB) Well-being Plan (see SA4.1). As part of this, a multi-agency poverty working group was established in March 2022 with the aim of producing an overarching Poverty Strategy for Pembrokeshire. The working group oversaw the deployment of discretionary cost of living funding across Pembrokeshire, one of the examples of which was the Keep Warm, Keep Well initiative which saw the allocation of £240k to local charities and support organisations.

Evidence- how do we know?

Improvement actions- what can we do better and how?

Improve social care debt recovery and reduce the amount of ‘bad debt’ provision.
Support Direct Payments for instance by implementing a new efficient payroll and managed banking service.
Implement Eclipse Case Management for Children’s Services and liaise with corporate IT to develop an IT strategy for Social Care.
Retender domiciliary care with an emphasis of encouraging a place based approach.
We are working on our social care debt recovery processes to support people to keep up to date with their financially assessed contributions. During 2023 we aim to increase the capacity within the team so that we can assign case workers to service users in debt and support them to put payment plans in place.
Develop an action plan to promote the use of social enterprises using Audit Wales’ self-evaluation toolkit.
Develop and implement a comprehensive improvement action plan arising out of the CIW inspection of Holly House, with the overarching aim to re-open the service as soon as possible.

Current performance - 3

Improvement phase - 3

2021-22 performance - 2

2021-22 improvement phase - 3

SA5.3 Housing

Assessment of current performance – how well are we doing?

The housing market continues to be challenging thorough 2022-23 but a slow-down in property prices has been seen throughout the latter part of 2022. However, affordability and the continued decrease in the availability of privately rented homes remain a challenge together with cost of living pressures.
The consequence of this has been an increase in homelessness and demand for social housing. The number of homelessness applications for assistance taken during January 2023 increased to just under 150, compared to just over a 100 in January 2022. The number of homeless people working with the Advice Team at the end of the month stayed steady around the 600 mark continuing from October 2022. The continued escalation in homeless case numbers has meant that we have had to increase use of B&B accommodation which also contributes to significant budget pressures. Despite the allocation of Welsh Government’s No-one Left Out grant, there continues to be a budget provision of circa £700-800k for this service.
In-roads have been made in increasing the supply of accommodation. We have signed up to Leasing Scheme Wales whereby we lease private rentals from landlords for a minimum 5 year period. With some adjustments in the housing market, there has been increased interest from landlords in this scheme. We also have an active acquisition programme with 21 properties purchased utilising £2 million Welsh Government grant funding (available due to acute homelessness pressures) resulting in a net cost to the Housing Revenue Account of £31.5k per property.
Increasing supply of new build social housing continues to be a priority. Following the initial set back of our Housing Development Programme, good progress has been made with completing 2 sites which will be due for completion by the end of the next financial year. Following a review of the tender arrangements we have successfully progressed with appointing contractors for both Haverfordia, Haverfordwest and Charles Street, Milford Haven developments. Work is also ongoing with designs for the Brynhir, Tenby development and community engagement sessions are being run. There were further delays on building flats on the former Motorworld building in Milford Haven which was demolished around five years ago. The scheme was re-tendered in March 2023 and a new contractor was appointed in July 2023 with the aim work starts in autumn 2024, with construction expected to take about 12 months.
We have seen considerable success in our delivery of the Social Housing Grant programme, with a full programme of social housing developments in partnership with our housing associations. A record slippage allocation of over £12 million on top of the same grant allocation was seen for 2022-2023, which will see social housing developments across the county moving forward at pace over coming years.
Following the review of the most appropriate level for the Council Tax premiums for both empty and second homes, a high level programme of work for utilisation of this premium was presented to Cabinet in February 2023.
The Council successfully recruited into an empty property office role as well as signed up to the Welsh Government’s Empty Homes Grant initiative. Bringing empty properties back into use is seen as a priority corporately with the aim of increasing housing supply through re-use of these under-utilised buildings.
The Optimised RetroFit Programme was agreed by Cabinet on the 13^th February 2023. The programme is for the financial years of 2022-2025, with the main themes being: affordable warmth decarbonisation and understanding the best pathway to better energy efficiency for homes and their residents. The programme intends to support the proposed Welsh Housing Quality Standard 2023 as the Welsh Government and the social landlords work towards establishing a new standard. As well as decarbonising the Council’s social housing stock, the programme will benefit the tenants with warmer, cheaper to run homes, reducing fuel poverty. This still remains a challenging task to achieve within the timescale set.
The implementation of the Renting Homes (Wales) Act has seen a significant impact on the service through the issuing of new secure contracts to all our tenants, together with revision of contract arrangements for supported and homeless temporary accommodation.
Community and tenant engagement and consultation remains a key priority for the service. Numerous tenants’ engagement and information sessions are held annually, and in 2022-2023 these included Renting Homes Act contracts, income maximisation and rent changes.
The Council has established a Tenants Panel to bring forward concerns and issues on our role as a social landlord. A themed programme of sessions/workshops has been held on rent setting, allocations policy review and building maintenance issues.
The Rapid Rehousing Transition Plan was taken through Cabinet and includes a 5 year programme of priorities and actions aimed at addressing homelessness and fulfilling Welsh Government’s ambition of ending homelessness.

Evidence – how do we know?

Improvement actions – what can we do better and how?

Finalise the new Housing Strategy. The completed strategy is anticipated by the end of 2023 and aims to focus on addressing affordability, involving key partners.
Improve the Housing Allocations Policy through a review of Choice Homes @ Pembrokeshire by the end of 2023.
Maintain and improve the quality and accessibility of housing stock, including compliance with WHQS 2023 as it is introduced, and deliver the Decarbonisation Plan for the Council’s housing stock, maximising opportunities for energy efficiency in housing.
Continue with delivery of the housing development programme of our own housing stock, as well as enable the delivery of social housing by our Housing Association partners as part of the Social Housing Grant programme.
Ensure robust repairs and improvements programme is in place for Gypsy Traveller Sites.
Revision and continued delivery of the Tenant Participation Strategy and Action Plan (2020-23).

Current performance - 3

Improvement phase - 3

2021-22 performance - 3

2021-22 improvement phase - 3

SA5.4 Economy

Assessment of current performance – how well are we doing?

Strategic focus: The Council’s work on improving economic outcomes continues to be guided by the Pembrokeshire Recovery and Regeneration Strategy 2020-2030 agreed in September 2020. This strategy is structured around three key outcomes: Connected; Offering; and Discovered. The Programme for Administration 2022-27 is based on this strategy and emphasises the economic and skills opportunities of green energy within the context of Pembrokeshire remaining a fantastic place to visit live and work.
In common with many other areas, the County’s economic performance including unemployment was hit hard by Covid and continued to recover in 2022-23. Small areas unemployment data from the 2021 Census shows or our 71 local areas are within the top quartile for unemployment in England and Wales; 17 are in the corresponding lowest quartile. During 2022-23, unemployment, as measured by claimant count fell compared with 2021-22 and was around 4% (typically 4.2% during the winter months, 3.8% in the summer), a little lower than the Welsh average.
Following up on 2021 economy peer challenge – the remaining recommendations related to the Council’s internal structure and visibility of the service. The Target Operating model is mentioned in section SA2.4 and following a restructure / re-alignment economic development now reports to the Assistant Chief Executive along with both the planning and property services. This has given the service greater visibility. The Chief Executive led the successful bid for the Freeport and is directly involved in the South West Wales Corporate Joint Committee which has a strong interest in economic development remit. The Economic Ambition Board and the Corporate Board (remit is to oversee and manage Capital Projects outside of 21C Schools and Housing) were both set up at the end of 2022-23 and provide a focus on these areas in future.
Work on Connected includes: Broadband, regional transport planning and securing funding for transport projects.
In relation to broadband, a medium term project collaborating with infrastructure providers, internet service providers and Governments 30% or 20,000 homes having access to gigabit capable fibre to the premise is in progress. Over £1.2m of voucher subsidy has been claimed by business and residents in 2022-23. Modelling undertaken prior to a broadband provider going into administration suggested that by December 2023 50% of premises would have access to fibre to the premises. More information is available in a Policy and Pre-Decision Overview and Scrutiny at its June 2023 meeting. Regular updates on broadband speed are provided by Ofcom through their Connected Nations updates (opens in new tab.)
Work on a Regional Transport Plan was progressed through the South West Wales Corporate Joint Committee but has taken considerably longer to set up than originally envisaged. Guidance was only issued in January 2023 and whilst a project manager is being put in place, the deadline for producing a first draft Regional Transport Plan is November 2023 which is very challenging.
The Council was not successful in securing capital Levelling Up Funding for Public Transport Interchange Schemes at three of our main towns which were submitted in July 2022. Lessons will be learnt in anticipation of submitting these to future funding rounds. The revenue situation for public transport is challenging and is likely to deteriorate in 2023-24. We rely on providers for school transport provision and in February 2023, we acquired a bus company’s assets to achieve greater stability in the market.
Offering: green energy. The Council was involved in a number of complementary projects to support the development of green energy in Pembrokeshire.
Alongside Neath Port Talbot Borough Council, Milford Haven Port Authority and Associated British Ports we submitted a successful bid for the Celtic Freeport to UK Government. This builds on regional collaboration structures through, for example, the Swansea Bay City Deal and the South-West Wales Corporate Joint Committee to deliver the significant opportunity of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea. Work will continue throughout 2023-24 and an Extraordinary meeting of Cabinet, 9 May 2023 has details of the benefits, such as £25m in seed capital and retained Non Domestic Rates for 25 years. Outcomes (across the whole area including Neath Port Talbot) include 16,000 well paid jobs, boosting skills, unlock the floating off-shore wind industry and boosting innovation in clean energy technologies.
Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) will establish Pembrokeshire as one of the leading areas for large (Gigawatt) scale energy generation and is a clear priority of the Celtic Freeport. We have been working with industry to publicise the opportunities for instance in a Senedd exhibition by Floventis Energy which featured promotional material for the Darwin Centre and local Pembrokeshire school children.
The two year £4.5m Milford Haven Energy Kingdom project came to an end in 2022 and has explored what a decarbonised smart local energy system could look like for the area around the Haven, paving the way for future projects. These include Statkraft’s Trecwn Green Energy Hub. This is a proposed green hydrogen electrolyser plant combined with 28 ha solar farm regenerating a long-standing empty site and RWE’s Pembroke Net Zero Centre which include plans to decarbonise the power station and green hydrogen production, potentially at Gigawatt scale.
Offering: Town centre regeneration - all construction projects have seen considerable inflation in prices and this has impacted on their affordability. Funding for capital projects is complex and relies on external grant funding. See 5 December 2022 Cabinet for details on capital costs and how these were managed in-year. Governance of projects is being improved and a report to March 13 2023 Cabinet details the establishment of a new ‘Corporate Board’ to oversee and manage Capital Projects outside of 21C Schools and Housing.
Interim advisory note on development in town centres adopted to allow a more permissive approach to development to support multi-functional and vibrant town centres and reduce retail vacancies. The most recent data, based on September 2022 surveys, paints a slightly improved picture on 2021’s the percentage of vacant retail units (in line with the national picture). However, retail vacancies in our main town remain well above the national average.
Draft Place making plans for Haverfordwest, Pembroke, Pembroke Dock, Fishguard & Goodwick, Milford Haven and Tenby have been developed via a consultancy, BE Group. It is hoped that these plans help to create a forward pipeline of projects in each of the towns once funding/development partners are identified. These plans will be reported to a future meeting of Cabinet and are being used as the basis of place based plans in 2023-24 with the first being Fishguard and Goodwick.
Haverfordwest - Western Quayside (Ocky Whites) first phase nearing completion and topping out ceremony held June 2023 which will complement Pembrokeshire Food initiatives. The Heart of Pembrokeshire project is based around the castle and the scope of this project was changed in the year with the original proposal to access the castle via a link through Bridge Street and replaced with an improved access route through Castle Square. The complementary transport interchange project has progressed and the multi-storey car park has been demolished. As of July 2023, the scheme is back out to tender and the former multi-storey site will be used as a temporary car park.
Pembroke - South Quay scheme is progressing with pre-construction work complete and additional consultation took place with stakeholders. Additional budget agreed by Cabinet at its December 2022 meeting split between Phase 1 focused on Castle Terrace (Library and Heritage Centre) and a later Phase 2 Northgate Street (social care day care and training facility). A progress update to Cabinet 24 April 2023 highlighted that the project is on a constrained site and has a high risk profile based on factors including: poor buildings condition; party wall issues; asbestos, the need to safeguard both heritage and ecology.
Other projects - Withybush Food Park has progressed and the Joint venture with Welsh Government has been agreed and sealed. A client advisor has been appointed to guide the design of incubator units. Infrastructure works have been completed and £2M funding has been agreed for installation of utilities. Agreements are in place for the disposal of two plots. For community regeneration, governance arrangements were agreed for the Shared Prosperity Fund (essentially the replacement for European Structural Funding). This includes an agreed framework for projects and structures that will considerably enhance capacity for community regeneration during 2023-24 and 2024-25. Cabinet’s agreed approach for the enhancing Pembrokeshire fund (agreed July 2023) will build on this additional capacity.
Visit Pembrokeshire, our partnership based Destination Management Organisation reported to Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee at its 15 November 2022 on its work over the past year. The Council supported a number of major events in 2022-23 including the 2022 world sprint rowing championships in Saundersfoot which took place in October.

Evidence – how do we know?

Improvement actions, what can we do better and how?

Address resource issues. Whilst steps have been made to bring in additional delivery resource energy projects alone present enormous opportunity and it is important that we resource appropriately in order to capitalise fully on opportunities and maximise benefit to residents and businesses in Pembrokeshire. Inflation and project delays (often encountered when regenerating brownfield sites) will need to be managed in Capital projects.
Green economic growth and opportunities through Celtic Freeport to develop ‘Pembrokeshire as the Green Capital of the UK’.
Place based regeneration building on the draft plans already agreed for six towns.
Maximise the benefit from external funding such as the Shared Prosperity Fund which is, in effect, the replacement for EU funding.

Current performance - 2

Improvement phase - 2

2021-22 performance - 2

2021-22 improvement phase - 2

SA5.5 Clean Environment/Climate Change

Assessment of current performance- how well are we doing?

We expect our 2022-23 recycling rate will be around 71% and we will exceed our statutory recycling target of 64% (figure will be confirmed in autumn 2023 and will be amongst the highest recycling figures in Wales). This compares with a 2021-22 recycling rate of 73% for Pembrokeshire (the all-Wales rate was 65%). The reason our recycling rate reduced was that tonnages of relatively heavy material, such as glass and food waste, declined faster than (the welcome) reduction in the total amount of waste. This may be a reflection of the cost of living crisis and other authorities have experienced similar reductions.
Our current refuse vehicle fleet uses diesel fuel. In 2022-23 we undertook a trial of the effectiveness of Ultra-Low Electric Vehicles but found the capacity and range of these is not sufficient for a rural county such as Pembrokeshire. We will continue to explore other options, potentially hydrogen. Eight additional battery operated vans (replacing diesel vehicles) were introduced in December 2022 and around 30 diesel vans are due to be replaced with electric vehicles in 2023-24.
Incidents of fly tipping in the first 3 quarters of 2022-23 were 1.7% below the equivalent period in 2021-22. This suggests the introduction of booking at waste and recycling centres has not resulted in an increase in fly-tipping and environmental damage. The booking system we put in has helped us to differentiate between commercial and domestic users, resulting in a significant saving.
Our 2022-23 street cleansing survey found 98.7%, were grade B or above, generally considered to be an acceptable level of cleanliness. This was improved on our 2021-22 figure of 95.4%. Both years’ performances are better than the Welsh average and a r eport on street cleanliness across the whole of Wales, by way of context, can be viewed here (opens in new tab.)
The Council started construction on the Eco Park project, the first phases of which are due to be operational from spring 2024. The project will replace an interim waste and recycling facility at the Port of Pembroke with a fit –for-purpose and future proof facility on former industrial land near Milford Haven. Ground clearance work has started. Further details, including stakeholder updates and information on community benefits are detailed on our website.
Our revised Local Toilet Strategy was agreed by Cabinet on 24 April 2023 and a separate paper was taken on funding for public toilets on 13 February 2023 Cabinet. The new strategy balances the Council’s overall budgetary constraints with the need to invest in public toilets, especially to meet the needs of disabled people. As part of the strategy a number of PCC toilets are identified for transfer to another organisation. Policy and Pre-decision Overview and Scrutiny Committee will consider how the new strategy is working at its November 2023 meeting.
Council agreed a new timetable for producing our revised Local Development Plan (a Delivery Agreement) at its meeting on 11 May 2023. The draft LDP2 was first delayed by Covid, then needed to take revised targets for phosphates into account. In effect, this has blocked new development in a number of locations. There is the potential for further delay as there is uncertainty over the timing and contents of NRW guidance for the tidal stretches of protected rivers in Pembrokeshire. More information on the Local Development Plan review is on our website. An annual monitoring report for the current LDP for 2021-22 was reported to 3 October 2022 Cabinet and 2022-23’s report will be agreed around the same time as this report.
Services Overview and Scrutiny committee considered planning service performance at three of its 2022-23 meetings. An improvement plan is in place to address staffing levels, reducing income in real terms, increased legislative restraints, responsibilities and constraints. Through increased capacity and more efficient processes performance within the Planning Service is improving, but is placing a short term pressure on experienced staff to train and mentor new staff members. The focus of future improvement will be on planning enforcement and 4.5 FTE enforcement officers now in place.
Using the plan we adopted in 2019 for a route towards being a net zero carbon local authority by 2030 through investing in systems for heating, transport, and electricity. For instance the Council partners with Egni Community Co-op for rooftop solar PV systems with plans to quadruple rooftop solar capacity in 2023 and the Salix Street Light project will reduce carbon emissions by 322 tonnes pa and save £205,000 pa in electricity costs, as well as saving in ongoing maintenance costs. A new sustainability board was set up in 2022-23 to co-ordinate action across the Council.
The Council has worked with Welsh Government to develop a Pembrokeshire Local Area Energy Plan setting out a vision for what a zero carbon energy system could look like in 2050, and the immediate actions for the Council to support this. Cabinet considered a draft at its 7 November 2022 meeting and development of the plan will now be taken forward by the Public Services Board.

Evidence- how do we know?

Cabinet 24 April 2023 LDP2 Delivery Agreement (opens in new tab)
Cabinet 24 April 2023 Local Toilet Strategy (opens in new tab)
Cabinet 13 February 2023 Public Toilet Funding
Cabinet 3 October 2022 Local Development Plan: Annual Monitoring Report 2021-22 (opens in new tab)
Services Overview and Scrutiny committee reports on 17 March 2022, 26 September 2022 and 17 January 2023

Improvement actions – what can we do better and how?

Costing of our net zero plans in light of concerns raised at Governance and Audit Committee during the year.
Phase 2 of roll out of kerbside collection (6% of Pembrokeshire’s households) and implementing new duties for the Business Recycling Regulations.
Successfully deliver Pembrokeshire Eco Park.
Implement changes to service as a result of new environmental legislation including the Deposit Return Scheme for drink containers.
Implement required actions to progress the completion of the revised LDP as set out in the delivery agreement.

Current performance - 2

Improvement phase - 2

2021-22 performance - 1

2021-22 improvement phase - 2

SA5.6 Improvement and Transformation

Assessment of current performance – how well are we doing?

This section provides a broad overview of improvement and transformation initiatives across the Council during 2022-23. Some of this work is covered in more detail within specific sections.
A new Transformation & Improvement programme is under development and new terms of reference for the Improvement and Transformation Board with meetings re-introduced on a quarterly basis. Further work is required on the Target Operating Model and the Transformation Programme, which will be informed by this years’ Service Improvement Plans (SIPS) and the successful submissions of the Accelerated Change Programme (ACP). The Improvement and Transformation team will be key to delivery change initiatives that are identified as part of budget savings and management of the MTFPs.
Preparatory work to undertake a review of communities and electoral arrangements in Pembrokeshire as required under the Local Government (Democracy) (Wales) Act 2013 is underway. The Council has asked the Local Democracy and Boundary Commission for Wales to undertake this work on its behalf and established a member working group to support this process.
There has been an update in terms of Smarter Working and Wellbeing pages on the intranet and the introduction of an enhanced hybrid working policy for employees. These improvements have fostered a trust based culture, with management of employees based on outcomes, rather than physical presence.
The Culture Amp Staff Engagement Survey received a response rate of 53% which surpassed expectations, and the working groups with each service have been positive, producing improvement actions from each service for senior leadership to scrutinise and develop further.
The Aspiring Managers programme has been introduced allowing the organisation to recognise potential future managers and put them on a pathway to help them develop skills to enable them to pursue careers in management. The programme has been a success with new intake commencing on the programme in September, aiding future planning in the organisation and upskilling employees.
Work to enable communities is currently ongoing with a focusing on encouraging and facilitating communities to build capacity and skills to become more resourceful and sustainable. The work links in with one of the PSB’s Well-being Objectives around strengthening communities.
Significant work has been done on maximising involvement, engagement and dialogue across the elected membership and officer cohort, strengthening the relationships which enable the Council to improve. These include:

The Chief Executive and the Assistant Chief Executive have been improving engagement with Cabinet through informal Cabinet and Cabinet structures, ensuring that there is an informal Cabinet session on a weekly basis. The introduction and embedding of these sessions has been a great success with significant buy-in from all Cabinet members.
The Chief Executive has been engaging with group leaders from each political group to get to know the demands and issues that each party has, these sessions have improved communication and understanding between members and officers and have led to an improvement in officer awareness and response to member demands.
A facilitated Top Team Development session was held on the 26^th January 2023, bringing members of the Senior Leadership Team and Cabinet together to discuss and agree good governance rules and principles. The session demonstrated a shared understanding and ownership of corporate governance processes and behaviours. The principles established in this session are subject to continuing, complementary work with the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.

The Improvement and Transformation team have been working on bringing external experience and ideas into the organisation, and have engaged an external organisation, New Local, to work with the authority.
The Data team participate in the work of DataCymru receiving updates through the newsletters and DataCymru communications. The Team have brought WLGA and DataCymru training to members, and are currently encouraging staff to access the training provided by New Local through the ELT shared E-mail, to be cascaded down through their teams.
There has been a greater focus on practical and tangible actions that enable people to see impact and generate momentum and confidence, and the work has fed into the move towards a more data and evidence based decision making process to make the organisation a more “insightful council”. There are a number of data management and insight projects being supported by the Data Team e.g. Operation Nightingale 23, Ukraine refugee data, Customer Space, Building Maintenance and introduction of the NEC management information system.
The data team has supported the performance management processes, in particular moving the Corporate Scorecard onto the Power BI platform to improve interactivity and accessibility of data.
The Improvement and Transformation team have been working hand in hand with the IT team to improve technology throughout the organisation, building robust and efficient system. For example, new Alexa technology was deployed last year and has been downloaded just over 1100 times. Engagement has been positive, surpassing expectations with waste and school meals enquiries being the most commonly used.
There has been a complete asset systems review, auditing the Council’s core back-end information systems and identifying where the systems are being hosted. This will inform the data team’s investigation into where data enters the organisation and where that information is stored. The review is ongoing and is aimed at addressing a number of historical issues with data practices within the Council, such as the siloing of data, complex and inconsistent reporting, a lack of user friendly systems for presenting data and late data.
The roll out of Microsoft Teams has fostered a more effective digital way of working throughout the organisation. The roll out has also offered the Improvement and Transformation team a good opportunity to look at the authority’s telephony system, which has included ongoing work looking at missed calls and customer engagement alongside the Data team.
Relationships between the Council and PAVS continues to be positive, including the creation of a shared Volunteer Co-ordinator post following a joint pilot scheme of the role between both organisations.

Evidence- how do we know?

Hybrid Working – Policy Statement
Example of the use of Power BI to display the Corporate Scorecard, as reported to Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee 19 January 2023 (opens in new tab)
Meetings and agendas of the Improvement and Transformation Board

Improvement actions – what can we do better and how?

Continued progress and intended closure of all actions listed on the Corporate Governance Improvement Plan, with a focus on organisational culture and relationship aspects of transformation.
In line with priorities set out by the Cabinet Member for Corporate Improvement and Communities in the Programme for Administration, facilitate greater community resilience and resourcefulness.
Continue to support the Council’s approach to data management and associated data insights projects, embedding a culture of data collection, usage and understanding throughout the Council.

Current performance - 2

Improvement phase - 2

2021-22 performance - 2

2021-22 improvement phase - 2

ID: 10977, revised 25/10/2023