Latest update from the Chief Executive 03.07

This morning we held the first meeting of Corporate Senior Management Team - virtually on Microsoft Teams - since before the Covid-19 emergency started.

I began by saying an enormous thank you to managers and I wanted to extend that to each and every member of this fantastic council team.

The efforts and achievements by everyone both at the frontline and behind the scenes along with the adaptability, innovation and resilience shown, has been absolutely outstanding.

There were far too many examples to mention this morning and I could only outline how we'd done everything from coordinating the vital community hubs to paying much needed grants to businesses to making sure we still emptied the bins and everything else in between.

There were times when we had to stand down some non-essential services so we could focus on the critical ones, keeping particularly our most vulnerable residents safe and receiving the support they need.

As people struggled with the effects of lockdown, and illness and loss due to the virus itself, the demand for our social care and community support services grew and to colleagues' great credit, almost 600 of you volunteered to be redeployed into different, frontline roles.

At this stage, for the most part we are in business as usual mode, having stood the vast majority of services back up and most of us have returned to our usual roles but there are some key differences which we talked about this morning.

Firstly, Covid-19 has exacerbated the challenges already faced by the city and its residents and as I've said before, the disadvantage gaps will inevitably grow in relation to people's health, learning, access to employment and their family and domestic circumstances.

So, we won't simply be defaulting to how we delivered services pre-Covid. Instead we are following the principles of reset and reform so that what we do has real impact to help residents rebuild their lives and livelihoods, both in the immediate and longer term. 

We will also have as much of an eye on opportunities as we do on the challenges and we're working hard with partners to ensure that Government knows Sunderland is ready, and more than able, to play a big role in the levelling up agenda. Throughout the crisis, at a time when all business has suffered and faced an uncertain future, investor interest and confidence in the city has remained, and major projects continue such as Riverside Sunderland with more in the pipeline.

And in order to deliver on the above, the second part of our conversation today was about how we change our working practices to be as productive and effective as we can. I talked last week about rolling out Home and Agile Working, and managers this morning talked about how we ensure we make it work for the benefit of both employees and our residents and customers. They also talked about some of the other gains and positives that have arisen as a result of navigating the emergency and the things we should retain as an organisation.

Whilst we have some big challenges ahead as I've described above, we also have a lot of opportunities and I really appreciate the way everyone is playing their part to help move the council and city forward.