It’s up to you
Milica Kitson, Chief Executive, CEWales, reports on recent Member Meetings and plans to set up focussed Leadership Groups and start delivering change. The catch is, it is up to you as members to drive the change
Three Membership Meetings around Wales in 3 weeks all with excellent input and discussions. The first CEWales Membership Meetings were about reporting on what we have done to date and what we plan to do over the next 12 months. They were also to discuss Membership and how we get more people to join. We think there are a lot of people out there who think we are still getting funding from Welsh Government. To be clear, we are not! We started on 1st October 2018 with the income from the first 10 members who joined – ISG, Morgan Sindall, Kier, Geldards, Knox & Wells, Wynne Construction , Ministry of Furniture, Cardiff University, Mott MacDonald and Willmott Dixon, thank you to each and every one of you for getting us off the ground.
The plan is to set up a Wales Leadership Forum and then to set up sub/working groups reporting back into that Leadership Forum. The Leadership Forum will be made up of CEWales Members together with representatives from all the Professional and Trade bodies operating in Wales. The Leadership Forum will set the Agenda for the next 12/18 months. Having said that, it is clear from all 3 meetings, the first sub/working group has to be Procurement so that will be set up at the same time. There is a view we have returned wholeheartedly to pre Latham and Egan, lowest price dominates. How are we ever going to deliver the aims and objectives of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Wales Act 2015 when that is the case?
Just to be clear, these working groups will not be talking shops. There will be a clear plan to deliver a set of recommendations and actions which will then be taken to Welsh Government for implementation. CEWales is now free to lobby. We have worked hard over the past 16 years to influence the Government and the wider public sector here in Wales in an effort to improve things to everyone's benefit. This will continue but now with more freedom. More details of the Leadership Group and working groups to follow.
We will also be setting up a Client Forum with CLAW (Consortium of Local Authorities in Wales) at the helm. The plan is to grow the number of clients as members but for now we have all 22 Local Authorities, 2 Universities, NHS Wales Shared Services and 2 Housing Associations.
CLAW will also be taking the lead for clients on the Wellbeing of Future Generations work we are currently undertaking. More about that in the next newsletter.