Kerslake review: Pickles sets Birmingham improvement deadline

9 Dec 14
Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has said that Birmingham City Council must improve its performance within one year or face Whitehall intervention after an independent review found it was not consistently providing good quality services for residents.

By Richard Johnstone | 9 December 2014

Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has said that Birmingham City Council must improve its performance within one year or face Whitehall intervention after an independent review found it was not consistently providing good quality services for residents.

Birmingham Council- Shutterstock

Publishing the review, led by Sir Bob Kerslake, which was formed to consider reforms to improve the performance of the UK's largest council, Pickles said its poor performance was holding the city back.

Kerslake, permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government, concluded that successive administrations had failed to take the big decisions needed to address problems faced by the city. These include its failing children’s services and a deterioration in its finances.

The review found that sweeping changes in how the authority is run are needed to ensure Birmingham maintains its status as Britain’s second city rather than fall behind competitors such as Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds.

Currently, the authority is not doing enough to provide consistently good quality services for residents or to help its economic partners grow the local economy, the review concluded. The council has also failed to provide leadership and a positive vision for the city, the review found, while Kerslake said a culture of sweeping problems under the carpet or blaming them on others had developed.

The report advised against breaking up Birmingham but warned that this option would resurface unless there are improvements. With 120 members, Birmingham is among the largest authorities in England, with 15 of its 20 wards having the biggest populations in the country.

This size means effective representation of residents was a challenge, and Kerslake’s main recommendation is to change the prevailing electoral cycle so that the whole of the council is elected every four years, rather than the current system of one-third being voted on every year. 

This would allow councillors to better focus on the long-term vision for the city and improve engagement in elections by residents, Kerslake said.

He also called for the council to improve how it approaches partnerships, as the authority is viewed as ‘complex, impenetrable and too-narrowly focused on its own agenda’.

The review also found there were bespoke finance units in different directorates across the authority, which acted in competition with the corporate centre. These should be merged together to improve corporate governance and help coordinate improvements, the report said.
‘Birmingham is a really great place and its people deserve the best possible services,’ Kerslake said.

‘However, over several years the council has failed to resolve its financial issues and the poor performance of its children’s services or to respond to the large number of people in the city with low skills. Collectively, despite the thriving physical regeneration of the city centre, this has held the city back.

‘People have said to me, Birmingham can’t carry on as it is now. Things have to change and they have to change quickly. This report presents an opportunity for Birmingham to turn the dial and improve its performance but the city should be in no doubt as to the risks if it doesn’t.’

Welcoming the review, Pickles said that for too long the council has been a dysfunctional organisation that has failed to get to grips with its problems.

‘It must stop looking to central government to bail it out and come up with innovative solutions itself,’ he said.

‘Now is not a time for the council to feel sorry for itself, but to start providing the leadership, skills and services its people need as the best authorities are doing across the country.’

Pickles announced he would shortly appoint an independent observer to report on progress made by this time next year.
If progress is not made, then the next government may decide to take much tougher action, with breaking up the council among the possibilities, he warned.

Responding to the review, Birmingham leader Sir Albert Bore and chief executive Mark Rogers said the report found that there is a strong and visible political leader as well as good relationships between members and officers.

‘We are already changing business planning and policy development processes to refine our key priorities and be clearer about the critical outcomes that we most need to improve across our communities.

‘We have also embarked on a process of renewing our shared understanding of the purpose and values of the organisation and changing the culture of how we work. The vision for the future city council is being actively developed, partly through an extensive dialogue with staff and also our community-focused big conversations.’

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