When elected in 2017, my administration set out our five-year vision for Cardiff to become a greener, fairer and stronger capital city. To achieve this vision, we focused on promoting inclusive economic growth, addressing inequality, and managing the city’s growth in a sustainable way, all whilst retaining an unrelenting focus on the performance of key Council services. Five years on, this Corporate Plan points to the progress made and reasserts our ambition for the city.
Children and young people have been at the heart of our plans as we work toward becoming a UNICEF Child Friendly City. As part of this approach, we have demonstrably prioritised investment in schools and improving outcomes for children and young people. Since 2017, our Education Service has seen significant and sustained improvements – with new schools delivered across the city and performance amongst the highest in Wales. The latest Estyn inspection report recognised the “bold and ambitious vision for learners”, the work undertaken to make “education everyone’s business in Cardiff” and the excellent service being delivered.
Beyond ensuring good educational outcomes, we have made significant progress in supporting young people thrive after leaving school. Through the Cardiff Commitment, over 300 employers now work with the Council to offer young people employment and training opportunities. We have leveraged the size and scale of our own organisation to make a difference, making at least 125 trainee and apprenticeship placements available for young people each year, creating a pipeline of opportunities.
As well as delivering new schools, we have built the first Council houses in Cardiff in a generation as part of one of the UK’s most ambitious Council house-building programmes.
As we are on track to deliver, we have now raised our aspirations further and pledged to deliver 4,000 new Council homes by 2030, whilst implementing measures to accelerate delivery.
We are continuing to support the delivery of key Transport White Paper projects, including expanding on the Metro plans for new tram-train routes and stations across the city. 15 kilometres of new cycleways have either been delivered or are under construction, almost every school now has an active travel plan and communities across the city are safer for pedestrians and cyclists thanks to the roll-out of 20mph zones.
Our work to support the Cardiff economy has ensured that it continues to deliver opportunities for the people of Cardiff and the wider region. With almost four out of every five net new job in Wales created in Cardiff between 2015 and 2020, this work is of national economic significance. Momentum will be maintained with the development of Central Square providing the city with its first central business district right next to a new regional transport hub.
We have championed the Living Wage across the public and private sectors and are proud that Cardiff has been awarded Living Wage City status. With over 160 employers now accredited Living Wage employers, Cardiff University has calculated that an additional £39m has gone into Cardiff’s economy as a result.
We have formally recognised climate change as the greatest challenge facing the city and taken major steps on the road to net zero. Since 2017, we have reduced our total carbon emissions from 23,958 t/CO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) to 12,800 t/CO2e, a year-on-year reduction of around 17%. As part of this work, we have opened a 9MW solar farm, progressed the first phase of a low-carbon, district heat network serving Cardiff Bay and added 36 new electric buses to the municipal bus fleet. To accelerate progress, we launched a new One Planet Cardiff Strategy to deliver a carbon-neutral Council and city by 2030.
We have also led a city-wide response to the pandemic and, whilst the public health crisis has brought with it unprecedented challenges, it has brought out the best in the city, its communities and those who work on their behalf. At the start of the pandemic, tens of thousands of food parcels were delivered to our city’s most vulnerable residents and hotels repurposed so that nobody need sleep on our city’s streets, leading to our transformative ‘No Going Back’ homelessness strategy. Joint working with our partners across the public services has been taken to another level as we worked together to deliver the highly effective Test, Trace, Protect Service and a mass vaccination programme, at speed, to save lives.
With Covid-19 increasingly being considered a vaccine-preventable disease, the Council will be turning its attention to leading a city-wide recovery. As well as being a devastating public health crisis, Covid-19 has brought significant economic hardship to bear, particularly on the poorest and most vulnerable. The Recovery and Renewal programme launched last year recognises the need to re-animate the city centre, protect jobs and support the recovery of key sectors. The effort to support the recovery should also, at every opportunity, seek to create lasting employment opportunities and support the transition to net zero. That is why this Corporate Plan contains a number of new commitments on leading a child friendly recovery, supporting the economic recovery, accelerating decarbonisation projects and delivering a programme of organisational development to lock in the benefits of hybrid working for staff and residents.
Clearly, we have made great progress since first launching our vision in 2017, however the journey doesn’t stop there. With the talent and dedication of our staff and our partnerships with Trade Union colleagues, public service providers, communities, and organisations across the city, we can raise our sights even higher.
I remain confident that we can emerge even stronger post-Covid-19, and deliver a better future for our citizens, our businesses, for the Capital Region and for Wales.
Cllr Huw Thomas
Leader of Cardiff Council
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