Who would want one of toughest jobs in Britain?
CHIEF executive of a large council is one of the most challenging jobs in the country. Running a council is a double-act between the leader, normally the leader of the political party with the most seats on the council, and the chief executive. They can expect to talk together almost every day.
To do this, they need to understand the issues facing those who run huge multi-faceted departments such as Leisure or Children’s Services. Familiarity with the strategies and initiatives of the past is a great advantage.
In legal terms, the chief executive is the council’s “head of service”, chairs its “management team” of chief officers, and is ultimately responsible for everything the council does, including its budget.
The chief executive also works with the other members of the cabinet, whose briefs cover the main areas of council activity. The cabinet members do not have the level of expertise of the senior staff but must have the confidence to stand up to them. A cabinet member not sure how to act is likely to turn to the chief executive.
Opposition councillors, and sometimes individual members of the ruling party, will also come to the chief executive, who must have the tact, respect and discretion to deal with the points they raise.
He or she will also have contact with the chairs of the scrutiny committees, modelled on the select committees of the Westminster parliament. Some of their reports are interesting and constructive. But they do not have the staff who can undertake detailed research and administration, or the time, to hold either the cabinet members or the council staff to account for every action they take.
The leader and chief executive will also have exchanges with central government civil servants and sometimes ministers, and represent the council on a wide range of partnership bodies which include leading players from the private and voluntary sectors. Some of these operate at city level, others cover the county or region.
The chief executive has to switch from one person or crisis to another, to keep cool and measured (“a safe pair of hands”), and to know when and how to intervene effectively.
There was a time when senior staff wanted to work in Birmingham, the biggest and most powerful local authority in Britain. They were told at interview that they would be expected to live in the city and in effect to be on-call 24 hours a day.
But no longer. The Birmingham brand has lost its allure. These days Birmingham Council is seen as a hard and risky place to work, and it does not find it easy to recruit permanent senior staff. Two related features have made it harder to run the city. One is the hollowing out of senior managers. This has been done to save money. Thus Leisure Services once had 7 Assistant Directors. Environmental Services had four, one of whom was responsible for refuse collection. But because there were only somewhat over 300 binmen, the post was deleted. It left Birmingham without anyone in a senior position with a hands-on knowledge of what was happening in the service.
The second is the employment of “interim managers” in senior positions, usually supplied by agencies on a short-term basis. They are expensive – much more so than staff directly employed – but can be recruited quickly to fill a gap. This has reduced the resilience of the council. Thus at the present time, the two most senior staff below the chief executive, the Chief Finance Officer (Fiona Greenway) and Monitoring Officer (effectively Head of Law, Marie Rosenthal) are both interim staff. The failure to realise that the behaviour of the binmen was leaving the council at risk of equal opportunities claims, or to control the spiralling costs of a new IT system, is largely explained by these features. Most of those who should be blamed for this have moved on to pastures new.
We do not know why Deborah Cadman suddenly left her post in Birmingham. Her position was carefully analysed by Jane Haynes in last week’s Post (Council chief’s sudden exit remains a mystery), where her conclusion is that the official version of events “doesn’t appear to stand up to scrutiny” and that she could be entitled to a massive payoff of half her annual salary.
Her position was clearly fragile. She had delivered a very successful Commonwealth Games, but the horrors of the equal opportunities claims and overspend on the new IR system occurred under her watch and led to the effective bankruptcy of the Council and the imposition of commissioners.
The consequence is to further complicate the complex range of tasks described above. Who would want to undertake such wide-ranging responsibilities when commissioners are trying to do the same things, at great expense to the citizens of Birmingham?
Running a council has to be a team effort, from a team that reflects local loyalties. It is going to be very difficult now to keep the team together and on-side.
These days Birmingham Council is seen as a hard and risky place to work, and it does not find it easy to recruit permanent senior staff