Council chief’s sudden exit remains a mystery
JANE HAYNES on the unanswered questions lingering after ‘planned departure’ of Deborah Cadman
BROKEN, beleagured Birmingham City Council sent out a carefully manicured press release last week announcing its chief executive of three years, Deborah Cadman, was leaving suddenly.
It seemed the highest paid and most visible member of the council’s corporate team had decided she had endured enough. Accompanied by positive comments from the council’s Labour leader John Cotton and government-appointed lead commissioner Max Caller, Ms Cadman’s departure was of her own volition, we are told. And rather than being a hasty decision, or one triggered by stress, say, it was one she had “always” intended to take, once the most damaging budget in the council’s history was signed off.
The city council is currently in a critical state and under the oversight of a team of government-appointed commissioners, parachuted in to run affairs last autumn. It has a deficit of at least £300m, which it has to plug with huge service cuts, job losses and a 10% council tax hike.
Said Ms Cadman as she announced her departure: “It was always my intention to leave the council once the budget (2024/25) was agreed, and we had a clear route to recovery and improvement.” It was “time to hand over the baton”, she said – though as things stand there is nobody to hand it to.
That version of events doesn’t appear to stand up to scrutiny. It is at odds with an interview with the Birmingham Post just a few weeks earlier, on January 9, when Ms Cadman voiced her determination to stay and doubled down on her commitment to the city she loves. Asked if she might quit, she said: “Absolutely not. This is the hardest job I have ever done but also a job I am completely committed to.”
She added: “This is my home city... it is really important to me that this council assumes the position of being the best in the country. I know this council needs to be better and can be... I am not being heroic, but it’s important that I continue to do the best for this council, but more importantly for the city I love.”
She went on to say: “If people are not committed to being with me and the leader on this journey then there is a question mark about their commitment to public service, in my opinion. I am committed to this organisation and to continue to deliver great services to those who need them.”
It also very much jars with a conversation I had with a senior officer at the council just two working days before the announcement of her departure last week. On that day I made initial inquiries about an official complaint that had been made against Deborah Cadman and news that she was off sick that day.
“Is this a cover? Is she on her way out the door?” I asked. Corporate answer – she is genuinely off sick, and no, she is not. It’s not the only thing that now looks a lot like a massaging of the truth – not an uncommon feature of Birmingham’s recent travails. The council corporate press office and council leader Cllr Cotton were both at pains to point out that Ms Cadman is not departing with a golden handshake, as if that somehow would reassure residents facing their own financial hardships.
She won’t be getting some over-thetop tip for her service, or a pension upgrade, they said – just what she was entitled to, like any departing employee. This was a decision made by agreement – suggesting she had not demanded it, and the broke council had not offered it, or they’d agreed it after some legalities.
What anyone failed to point out, however, was that Ms Cadman has a contract with a lengthy notice period. Six months in fact. If, as we are told, she had just given in her notice, yet leaves on Friday, she will likely have negotiated to be paid up in full on her contract to August or thereabouts – a tidy sum of £130,000 gross, by our estimates, based on her annual £260k salary.
Had this been a planned departure, she would have been expected to work on, at least through some of her notice, and to imbed a successor.
Our unanswered questions include a request for clarity about when Ms Cadman decided to leave, whether she has left of her volition, when her notice period started, and the terms of her departure. Our inquiries have received a firm ‘no comment.’ Ms Cadman has so far kept her counsel and not taken up our interview request.
We have also flagged inquiries with the council about secretive internal inquiries being carried out into the council’s finances, whistleblower complaints and the Oracle situation – so far without a response beyond ‘no comment.’ Even using the Freedom of Information Act has failed to elicit answers so far, though we persist.
It’s an exasperating state of affairs. Ms Cadman started her tenure with such optimism. Her calibre and experience, including most recently as CEO at West Midlands Combined Authority, and her love for and roots in Birmingham,
were seen as vital. She was one of the most influential people in local government, according to a top-100 list. Seen as an important step in one of the country’s most ethnically diverse communities was that she was also blazing a trail by becoming the council’s first CEO of colour.
But Birmingham City Council breaks people, or people break it. It’s hard to know for sure whether early promise fades as the immensity of the role emerges, or reporting into and relying on elected politicians of variable quality undoes even the most resilient and talented. The last incumbent to stay more than three years was Stephen Hughes, who was at the helm from 2005 to 2014. His legacy ended with the damning Kerslake report into the council’s affairs.
Some would argue Ms Cadman’s resignation – referred to since by council leader Cotton as her retirement – was overdue given the enormous blow to the council’s reputation from its de facto bankruptcy last year.
No matter if it emerges that she was left a lame duck by a weak political leadership, or was let down by trusted chief officers on bloated salaries or fees, as head of service with financial oversight the buck had to stop with her.
Others say she should have been sacked. Yet others, including opposition councillors, say we have lost a talented, committed officer who was our best hope of recovery.
The facts are these. Since her arrival in March 2021, initially on a temporary contract, the council has gone ‘live’ with a catastrophic IT and finances system upgrade. Its shadowy equal pay challenges have exploded into the light. It’s also become clear that the grip on financial best-value has been, at best, loosely applied. But there have been achievements too. Its children’s services and adult care services have improved, according to regulators, and it was tackling its long-standing failings in SEND services. The Commonwealth Games in 2022 were a triumph.
Ms Cadman also set out a transformation plan for a future, smaller council, and was trying to tackle poor performance. But there were rumours of bullying and a toxic culture among the council workforce, sometimes involving senior staff. A critical governance review shed light on some of this. The impacts on the financial and digital teams are said to have been especially dire.
Lead commissioner Max Caller was said to be on ‘team Deborah,’ even when officials at the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities were said to be less convinced that continuity was the best way forward. Asked about Ms Cadman at Christmas, he said: “Deborah Cadman is a good chief executive, she has a track record of success in many authorities. When she came here, her number one challenge was to ensure the Commonwealth Games was delivered. Nobody could say she did not do that.
“What’s important is that there are now clear targets (for the CEO) that will be public and shared with full council, who can then hold her to account. Then you can reasonably ask questions about whether she is delivering or not.
“The Kerslake review (2014) identified a lot of problems with the city council; the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny (2023) identified a lot of the same problems... you cannot blame Deborah for anything that happened before she was here.”
Ms Cadman is not the only senior, highly paid officer of the council to depart over the last 12 months from senior roles in services that have fractured. Departures have included the director of council management Becky Hellard, who oversaw financial affairs up to April 2023, director of IT and digital services Peter Bishop and director of transformation Meena Kishinani, who left last month, interim director of people services Darren Hockaday and city solicitor Janie Berry, who left in September.
Through this turmoil, the political leadership has remained intact and consistent. None of the Labour leadership group of councillors who form the cabinet – most of them serving the city council for many years and with oversight of multiple failings – have suffered a Damascene moment and announced their departure.
Some seem to be relying on a distant, future public inquiry to abdicate them of responsibility, or provide the hard evidence of wrong doing. The next local election, when they will directly face their local electorate, is not until 2026.
Until then, they apologise and carry on. We, however, will continue to ask questions on your behalf, and hope for the honesty and openness that those at the top of Birmingham City Council profess to wish to provide.
n Prof Graeme Betts, currently corporate director for adult social care, is stepping up temporarily to be chief executive alongside his current role while the council works with commissioners on the next steps.