What a week it was! I’m sorry I missed our tea

Weekly Waffles: Katherine Kerswell

Here it is, the moment we know many loyal readers have been waiting for – the latest missive from the office of the council’s chief executive, Katherine Kerswell.

Trite, trite, and paternalistic doesn’t cut it, but we know that students of executive management techniques look forward to us republishing these weekly homilies to preserve as examples of bad practice.

So to send you into the Bank Holiday weekend with an extra spring of pure joy in your step, here’s the wisdom gleaned from the £192,474-a-year CEO – issued a day early in the week (possibly because KK takes a long weekend). just a little more):

dear ones,

What a week it was!

On Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister called a general election for July 4. This means that we are to enter the pre-election period on Friday 31 May, after the dissolution of parliament next Thursday. Colleagues in our communications and legal teams are preparing updated guidance which will be shared with you all shortly. It’s certainly shaping up to be a busy summer, but seeing how everyone came together for the recent London elections, I’ve no doubt we’re in a good position as preparations for July begin.

On Monday, the CMT (it stands for “Corporate Management Team), Directors and all Heads of Department came together for our extended monthly management team meeting. There were some important updates on our approach to equalities and a new and improved EQIA template, as well as facilitated sessions led by divisional representatives, including an update on our digital transformation journey so far. The titles of these discussions will be shared during meetings with the management and divisional teams.

Croydon Council’s annual meeting took place on Wednesday 22nd May. Each year sees the appointment of the chair and vice chair of council meetings for the new municipal year, roles given to the civic mayor and their deputy. For 2024-2025, the new Lord Mayor of Croydon is Cllr Kola Agboola, our first African Lord Mayor, and the Deputy Lord Mayor is Cllr Richard Chatterjee.

Everything is cheerfully interesting: As director of the general election, Kerswell will receive a generous additional salary

Executive Mayor Perry delivered his annual statement, reflecting on the past 12 months and priorities for the coming year. He commented on everything we offer, all our improvement work and ongoing progress to transform services. The session also included confirmation of appointments to council committees and bodies and formally welcomed new council members. The full recording of the Annual Council is available on the webcasting site.

Thank you to everyone who joined this tea break hosted by the Disability Staff Network. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, I’ve been busy with this awful chest infection that’s been going around, but I understand it was another rich and valuable discussion that didn’t shy away from some of the serious issues. faced by disabled staff at work.

A theme that keeps coming up in our tea break sessions that we need to address is the inconsistency across all our services in Croydon. I know many of you have supportive managers who apply the things we’ve put in place to help you, such as reasonable adjustments, but there are pockets where that’s not the case and we need to make sure that’s modeled all in all. organization at every level and that our managers have the right guidance and support they need. I commissioned a new management development program designed to do just that, and I look forward to sharing it with all of you.

Enhancing manager development is also a big part of our people and culture transformation strategy, which is why I’m delighted to say that our manager conference is back in July. Like the staff awards, this important stage in our calendar has been on hiatus since the pandemic. To provide flexibility, the conference is repeated over three sessions and it is mandatory for managers to book into one of them – more details about the sessions will follow, but for now, if you are a manager, please see the booking details above down. to secure a place and save the date in your diary.

We hope you will see that we have launched a volunteering pledge this week, asking staff to commit a total of 300 hours to volunteering in Croydon and helping our communities. This is ahead of Volunteer Week (3 – 9 June) where we will be sharing information about volunteering opportunities available in the district. At this stage you just need to commit to giving some of your time at some point this year and you can use your council volunteer hours to help you do this. Please get involved, volunteering has so many benefits both for the cause you are supporting and for your own well-being, I really hope we exceed our target!

This week’s shout out goes to Temporary Housing Officer Callum Cumpper-Edwards. A resident was in a vulnerable situation and experiencing difficulties in their current accommodation and after sending several emails to the council decided to go into Access Croydon and wait to see someone face to face. Callum took the time to see them and listened to their concerns. Alternative temporary accommodation was arranged, with the resident emailing to express how grateful she was to Callum for all he had done. Another great example of how talking to people, listening and showing that we care can make a huge difference – well done Callum.

Have a great bank holiday weekend and as always thank you to everyone who will be working to keep our services running, your hard work does not go unnoticed.

Katherine Kerswell (she/her)
Executive Director

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