Kerslake review calls for improvement panel at Birmingham for "robust challenge"

A review of Birmingham City Council has recommended that an independent improvement panel be appointed to provide “the robust challenge and support the council requires”.

The review – commissioned by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Birmingham's Leader Sir Albert Bore in the wake of the ‘Trojan Horse’ allegations in relation to the city’s schools and led by Sir Bob Kerslake, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government – concluded that:

• The city council’s size acted as “both a badge and a barrier: it has led to a not invented here, silo based and council knows best culture”. These characteristics were not an inescapable feature of the authority’s size but they needed to be acknowledged and addressed. There was much to learn here from other large authorities;
• The narrative within Birmingham and the council needed to become more positive. “Birmingham City Council too often sees itself as a victim. Whilst the financial and other challenges are considerable and must be tackled, the public and businesses are calling for a more positive vision”;
• Thirty years ago the council was at the cutting edge of innovation in local government but had lost ground. “To return it needs to start with getting the basics right”;
• There was a blurring of roles between members and officers. “The relationship needs to be reset and officers given the space to manage”;
• The current devolution arrangements within the city were confused and very few people understood them. They had also not been reconciled with the council’s financial position;
• The council’s vision for the future of the city was neither broadly shared nor understood by the council’s officers, partners or residents;
• Instead there was a multiplicity of strategies, plans and performance management processes which lead to unnecessary complexity and confusion and were not followed through to delivery;
• The chief executive and corporate leadership team lacked the corporate support and capacity that was needed to undertake their role effectively;
• Neither the savings nor the staff reductions the council had made had been underpinned by a long-term strategic plan for the nature and shape of the future council and the people it needed;
• The council faced very significant budget difficulties in the next few years and did not yet have credible plans to meet these;
• Performance management was ineffective and not up to the scale of the task;
• The council, members and officers had too often failed to tackle difficult issues. They needed to be more open about what the most important issues were and focus on addressing them;
• Partnership working needed fixing. “While there are some good partnerships, particularly operationally, many external partners feel the culture is dominant and over-controlling and that the council is complex, impenetrable and too narrowly focused on its own agenda”;
• The council needed to engage in across the whole city, including the outer areas, and all the communities within it; and,
• Regeneration must take place beyond the physical transformation of the city centre. There was a particularly urgent challenge in central and east Birmingham.

However, the Kerslake review, which can be viewed here, rejected the idea that the council was too big and should be completely broken up.

“On balance, we are not convinced that would currently be the best option,” the report said. “It is not clear that splitting the council alone would address the major challenges the city and council face. Our view is the council’s problems are not just due to its size; many are the result of a series of poor decisions over a number of years but they must be addressed.”

The review made a number of recommendations which it argued would – when taken alongside the interventions being led by Lord Warner and Sir Mike Tomlinson – “turn the dial sufficiently for Birmingham City Council to begin to improve”.

In addition to the appointment of an independent improvement panel (which should have Lord Warner and Sir Mike Tomlinson as ex-officio members), the review recommended that:

• The council should draw up an improvement plan with clear dates for delivery. Regular updates should be provided to the Communities Secretary and updates on progress should be provided to residents;
• A report should be published in December 2015 about how the council had implemented the review’s recommendations;
• The authority’s governance needed to be “reset” in a number of ways. These included clarification of the roles, responsibilities, behaviours and ways of working expected in relation to the Leader, Cabinet, councillors, chief executive and officers. The strategic, executive, independent scrutiny and community roles of members needed to be clearly defined and better supported. The council should also develop a simplified planning framework, and transformation support services such as finance and Human Resources should be managed corporately;
• The Communities Secretary should move the council to all out elections replacing the current election by thirds. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England should conduct an electoral review that reflected existing communities. This should be completed to enable elections by May 2017;
• The council needed as a matter of urgency to develop a robust plan for how it was going to manage its finances up to 2018/19 without recourse to further additional funding from central government;
• The HR function should be strengthened in a range of ways. These included vesting the strategic role of workforce planning and HR in an existing Cabinet member. The whistleblowing processes that are being put in place in the child safeguarding service should also be mirrored in the council’s other services;
• Birmingham should establish a new model for devolution, with the council focused on getting basic services right. The ten district committees should not be responsible for delivering services or managing them through service level agreements. The number of city-wide scrutiny committees should be reviewed and potentially reduced to three;
• The creation of a new independent Birmingham leadership group should be facilitated. This group should approve the new long-term City Plan and be used to hold all involved in the delivery of the plan to account;
• The council should redefine its partnership approach. This should be done by, amongst other things, having shared clarity about the mission, objectives and purpose of individual partnerships and how they will judge their performance;
• A combined authority governance review based on an authority formed of at least in the initial stage the core functional economic area of Birmingham, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Solihull should be completed by July 2015. Once this has happened the Government should begin to engage in a dialogue about further devolution;
• The Government should support the creation of a new locally-led high powered partnership vehicle focussed on increasing employment and improving skills, starting in the most deprived parts of Birmingham. An agreed plan including proposals for Government should be developed by April 2015.

Commenting on the findings, Sir Bob Kerslake said: “Birmingham is a really great place and its people deserve the best possible services. The country also needs a thriving second city.

“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.”

Suggesting that the city’s economy had underperformed – not just compared to London but to Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield – he added: “In carrying out this review, I have spoken with those who know Birmingham best and their views have formed the basis of my findings. 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.”

A joint response from Sir Albert Bore and chief executive Mark Rogers said they recognised and accepted the broad thrust of all the recommendations in the report.

They said Birmingham would implement a number of the recommendations immediately, but had reservations about four covering financial planning, devolution, long-term vision and the combined authority.

“These [reservations] mainly revolve around one particular concern we have with the report as a whole,” Bore and Rogers explained. “This is the presumption, inherent in many of its recommendations, that the people of Birmingham and their city council should be instructed on local affairs from Whitehall.”

The Leader and chief executive said they could not immediately accept detailed proposals that were “overly prescriptive and would undermine or jeopardise local consultation and negotiation”.

In relation to the improvement panel, Bore and Rogers warned that it would generate extra work and expressed concern that “a further prescriptive intervention of the kind outlined may not be wholly helpful”.

They added that the council would expect to be able to influence its membership given that the review was jointly commissioned, and called for a dialogue between the authority and the DCLG.