Wrexham County Borough Council Vision: that all the people that live here are supported to fulfil their potential, prosper and achieve a high standard of well-being. We will be a strong and inclusive community leader to help make this happen, with a focus on strong values and behaviours.
This Council Plan is the means by which Wrexham County Borough Council has published its Well-being Statement and has defined its Well-being Objectives as required by the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.
Foreword
A letter from the Leader and the Chief Executive of Wrexham County Borough Council
Welcome to Wrexham County Borough Council’s new Council Plan 2023-28. This document is where we set out our vision and ambitions for the next five years, moulded by your views and aspirations for Wrexham and your communities. The plan is a high level strategic document that drives the activities of the council, supported by the council’s Medium-Term Financial Strategy and underpinned by our service level strategies and projects. The plan details our well-being objectives, which we call our council priorities, and the outcomes we want to achieve within these council priorities to improve the social, cultural, economic and environmental well-being of Wrexham.
Developing the new plan provided an opportunity for the council to reflect on what has been achieved over the last three years, under the unprecedented circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic and recovery. Wrexham is now at an exciting point in the improvement journey and we want to continue to build on the progress made, which has been the result of our councillors, workforce, partners and communities working together. During the last year, there is no doubt that Wrexham was firmly placed on the map with the achievement of being awarded city status and being a runner up for City of Culture. Not forgetting achievements in the sporting world which has seen global promotion for Wrexham and the people who live here. The Wrexham Gateway project and the football museum for Wales are fantastic examples of projects giving us a national profile.
We want to build on the excitement and ambitions of the County Borough over the next five years to make a difference for the people of Wrexham, where they can fulfil their dreams and aspirations. We want to work towards a place that is sustainable, greener, protects our most vulnerable, is ambitious, and a place where people have good well-being.
However, alongside this we recognise the ongoing challenges our communities face including the cost of living crisis, inequalities within our County Borough and climate change. This is in addition to the lasting effect of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on communities, especially on the most vulnerable and children impacted at key stages of their development. These concerns have shaped our council priorities and will continue to drive our improvement journey. We have woven our equality outcomes into this plan, to deliver on our commitment to achieving better and fairer outcomes for all, promoting equality and diversity and reducing the impact of socio-economic disadvantage. We want to listen more to our communities and build stronger relationships, where the people of Wrexham are part of the journey. We have a strong community spirit in Wrexham that we want to harness to empower our communities. We want Wrexham County Borough to be a place where our residents thrive.
To achieve this we must be an effective council and in 2022 we delivered our first published self-assessment under the new Local Government and Election (Wales) Act, which requires the council to review how we work and how efficiently we use our resources. We will continue to review and publish our self-assessment on an annual basis and responding to the findings will support the delivery of our vision.
A skilled, diverse and sustainable workforce must be in place to deliver the services that our communities need and want. We will strive to ensure that Wrexham County Borough Council is an ‘employer of choice’ to attract, recruit and retain individuals with the skills and experience that will benefit our communities. We understand that this is a challenging task in the national context of a highly competitive recruitment market and aim to continue to respond with new initiatives to support recruitment and retention for example the continued roll out of our ‘Grow your Own’ approach, to address recruitment difficulties in certain areas, such as social care.
In developing this plan, we have recognised that we cannot achieve this alone and it is the collaboration with our partners, businesses and communities which will allow us to achieve our vision for the people of Wrexham. We have ensured in developing the activities and strategies that underpin the work of the plan that we commit to our sustainable ways of working including integration and collaboration. We hope you enjoy reading about our vision for Wrexham County Borough and we want to continue to work together with you, the people and communities of Wrexham to deliver on this plan.
Cllr Mark Pritchard – Leader of the Council
Ian Bancroft – Chief Executive
We welcome your comments on both the format and the content of our Council Plan. If you have any suggestions or comments to make the plan more readable, or for additional or alternative areas on which the council should focus please contact us at the address below. Any proposals for additional areas of focus will be considered as part of the performance management and updating of this plan. Comments on the presentation of the plan will be considered for its next publication date.