30 January 2009
By Tash Shifrin
The Local Government Association has appointed John Ransford as its chief executive to steer it out of its recent turmoil and lead it through to late 2010.
Ransford, previously deputy chief executive, has been acting head of the organisation since Paul Coen was sent on gardening leave in December.
Coen had fallen out with the LGA’s political leaders over implementation of its development strategy. His departure has now been confirmed.
Ransford – dubbed ‘Mr Fix-it’ by one senior insider – had been due to retire this year. But he will now hold the top job until December 2010, overseeing implementation of the revamped development strategy for the LGA Group.
This will focus on significantly improving the service the LGA provides to its member councils and boosting efficiency.
New ‘account managers’ for each council will bring the LGA closer to its members, Ransford said. ‘We‘ve been very successful as a lobbying organisation... but weren’t really close enough to the sector we represent.
‘We’d like every council to have... a named person who can help as a facilitator and guide them through the system, someone they recognise who visits occasionally.
‘He told Public Finance: ‘We’ve got 400 members and we’ve got to make sure it’s done well. A lot of us will be involved.’
Plans to merge the LGA Group of companies – including Local Government Employers, the Improvement & Development Agency and the 4Ps – into a single services body have been put on hold.
Structural change would now be considered ‘only on the basis of what improvement it can bring’, Ransford said. ‘Organisational change is no solution in itself. That was always the case but it needs to be clearer.
‘The key difference [in the revised strategy] is concentrating in the next six months on doing things we can do within the current arrangements.’ The shake-up has ‘been seen as some sort of special project’, Ransford said. ‘But it can’t be, it must be central to what we do.’
The LGA Group will now follow a thematic approach to its work, cutting across the subsidiary organisations.
An integrated group business plan will be produced by March, along with a group financial strategy. Marketing, media and conference functions will be brought together across the group in April.
But Ransford did not rule out smaller-scale changes to the LGA Group. ‘Three years ago, I managed the creation of Local Government Employers and we changed the nature of the IDA — some of this is incremental, it’s not necessarily a big-bang approach,’ he said.
PFjan2009
