Cllr. David Thomas: How working together is moving us forward

In this week’s column I wanted to share with you one of my working days from last week. It was a long but worthwhile day that really shows the breadth of work that goes on behind the scenes.

It all started with a 5am alarm call as the Chief Executive of the Council and I had been invited to present to a Local Government Association (LGA) Conference in Bristol. The presentation was to talk about the Council’s journey from our LGA peer review in 2015 to the Council being awarded most improved council earlier this year by the Local Government Chronicle.

We gave a thirty-minute presentation, followed by an hour of questions from our peers who are based in other local authorities across the country. During my response to these questions, what really stood out to me, was just how far we have come as a place over the past eight years.

In our presentation we shared our journey, together with the extent of our challenges. Back in 2015 this included financial viability, core leadership and governance issues, together with the ‘long standing’ challenges in Children’s Services.  

We now have a Children’s Services that were rated as ‘Good’ by Ofsted in their last inspection. We have also enhanced performance, as well as established a culture of continuous improvement. We feel the ‘tanker has turned’, everyone in the council is on board and we are steering the right course to a Torbay where everyone thrives.   

During my presentation, it was important to recognise our continued improvement has been a joint journey. All the previous administrations over the past decade have made great strides towards improving what we offer and deliver. We know we still have a lot to do but we are certainly not taking our foot of the pedal of moving forward to improve our place and resident’s lives.

After our morning slot at the conference, we travelled back and went straight into a working lunch with representatives from the Arts Council. They were spending two days in the Bay and we wanted to highlight and showcase the many opportunities that exist to enhance our cultural offer across the Bay. This will be through additional revenue or capital projects that we are hoping they will get behind and support us in every sense of the word.

Meeting with organisations like this really gives us the opportunity to show who we are as a place. This leads on well to my next meeting, which was at the Torbay Place Leadership Board, held at Torquay United Football ground.

This Board is what started our journey with the Torbay Story, which is our narrative about our place - who we are and what is unique about Torbay. This story has helped us show investors nationally, and globally, why they should be investing in us. The Board is a partnership with other key stakeholders across the Bay and is all about ensuring that we work together and are better in everything we do.

This month’s meeting gave us the opportunity to talk about our joined-up messages as we continue our negotiations with the Government around our Levelling Up Partnership. I hope to share soon what projects and schemes the funds from this partnership can help us move forward with.

As the day finished, I had one more event to attend in the evening. Along with fellow Councillors and some Council Officers, we were very kindly invited to visit the Royal Lyceum Theatre on Abbey Road in Torquay for a viewing of the award-winning film ‘3 steps’.

The film portrays what it is like to be homeless in Torquay, and amazingly for those who took part, the film has been submitted for a number of awards. The film itself is shot entirely within Torquay and all the actors were once homeless themselves.

The day was certainly full on, lots of people to meet and chat to, many varied subjects and as I say, every day is always different. To be frank – I am grateful that everyday doesn’t start at 5am, but sometimes needs must and I genuinely believe it was well worth the additional effort to fit everything in. You know my buzz word is ‘delivery’ and if it only takes hard work we will get there!