City council not changing quickly enough, says improvement panel

THE business-led Birmingham Independent Improvement Panel says it is not yet clear that the city’s local authority understands the scale of change required to meet the recommendations of the Kerslake Report.

The panel was established to oversee progress within Birmingham City Council following the publication of the Kerslake report in December last year.

Sir Bob Kerslake’s independent review of the governance and organisational capabilities of the council followed a number of well-publicised failures in areas such as education and children’s services.

The improvement panel is liaising with the council to ensure Kerslake’s recommendations are implemented and reporting back to the Government on the progress being made.

But in an update letter sent to Greg Clark MP, the secretary of state for communities and local government, panel chairman John Crabtree expressed concern about the political leadership of key aspects of the council’s improvement plans.

The letter outlines areas where encouraging progress has been made but it also raises questions about the pace of change for important elements of the programme.

Amongst these is the development of the City Partnership which will bring together key partners to develop a shared and long-term vision for the city.

The letter to the secretary of state follows a public meeting of the panel held in June at which the leader of the council and opposition party leaders answered questions about its progress from both the panel and the public.

Crabtree said: “The improvements we want to see happen quickly in Birmingham are not bureaucratic niceties. They are about how the Council works with all its partner organisations, and crucially with its own residents, to create a city which responds to their needs and aspirations.

“It is not yet clear that the senior political leadership of the Council fully understands the scale of change required. We are not seeing the radical shifts necessary to address the starkest of Lord Kerslake’s criticisms relating to the Council’s culture.”

Crabtree – a former senior partner at Birmingham law firm Wragge & Co (as it was then), a former High Sheriff of the West Midlands and former president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry – said the panel has now received assurances from the council’s leadership and expects the pace of progress to increase significantly in the coming months.

Responding to the Crabtree letter to the secretary of state, leader of Birmingham City Council Sir Albert Bore and chief executive Mark Rogers, said: “We accept that the council has taken some time to get out of the starting blocks in a number of areas but we are confident that we are now moving forward at pace and on all fronts.

“There will be an acceleration of the actions required over the summer, which will include progressing the recruitment of senior officers to increase strategic capacity; running networking events with partners to develop a shared and long-term vision for the city; and completing a programme of workshops across all service areas to develop our financial planning for both the short and longer term.

“We are pleased that the panel has recognised ‘encouraging  progress’ in relation to member roles and responsibilities in terms of employment and human resources; the reworking of district committee responsibilities; the reduction of scrutiny committees; the alignment of the Leader’s Policy Statement and Future Council programme; and the creation of a member development plan that is already being implemented.

“The leadership of the council is fully committed to this programme of wide-ranging a fundamental change and we are pleased the panel has accepted our reassurance on this and that pace will now increase in order for us to demonstrate significant progress by September.”

The panel will report again to the Secretary of State in September, and then in December, a key date set by Lord Kerslake for the council to publish a report about how it has implemented his recommendations for assessment by the panel.