‘People said I was mad, it’s mission impossible’
Birmingham City Council’s newest chief executive tells Jane Haynes why she won’t hold back from tough decisions and how she is determined to turn this city around...
“BIf you are not prepared to come here and make a difference, then do not apply. Deborah Cadman
EING good enough is not good enough,” proclaims Birmingham City Council’s chief executive Deborah Cadman, turning on its head the oftquoted self help mantra.
“The city needs the best if it is going to be the best.”
It’s a decisive statement of intent from Cadman, who took up the top seat at the council HQ in June last year, on an interim basis.
“Be true, be troublesome, challenge yourselves and each other. There is a lot to do,” she has told her staff.
In her first major interview since her appointment, Cadman makes clear she is not merely laying down that challenge to the council workforce – but to the whole city.
To overcome the city’s historic inequalities, to build more affordable and social homes, to better look after the city’s children and young people, the council needs help.
Cadman, who was brought up in east Birmingham in a working class family and attended a local comprehensive, is proud of her roots.
“When I got the job, a few people said, ‘Are you mad? It’s mission impossible’,” she reveals, with typical candour. “I knew it would be difficult, hard, challenging, but not impossible.”
The city’s track record on holding on to chief executives is unimpressive – seven have taken the helm in just four years.
The last incumbent, Chris Naylor, was brought in on an interim contract but a difference of opinion over internal issues and a breakdown over contract arrangements scuppered a long-term deal.
He ended up leaving two months early. That’s when Cadman – at the time the chief executive of West Midlands Combined Authority – threw her hat into the ring, describing it as a dream opportunity for a Brummie.
She too is on an interim contract, ending after the Commonwealth Games – though in reality her future
is more likely to be decided in the aftermath of the forthcoming all-out elections in the city.
“No one person can make the changes needed in this organisation,” she says, reflecting on her first seven months in charge.
“I was clear I needed to build a strong corporate leadership team, of like minds.
“I was also clear to anyone who might be interested in taking a top job here – if you are not prepared to come here and make a difference, then do not apply.”
She has since moulded her top team, bringing in nationally recognised experts like Homes England director Paul Kitson and former
Department of Education policy adviser and Ofsted strategy director Richard Brooks and getting highly rated interim finance chief Rebecca Hellard to take the job full-time to help take on some of the ‘very difficult challenges’ facing the city.
A ‘blame culture’ has sometimes paralysed people from doing the right thing and making tough decisions in the past, she says.
That cannot persist if Birmingham is to reach its potential.
“When we make difficult decisions we need to be true, and our staff need to be protected and supported.”
The city’s challenges are well documented, but are set out starkly in a new Levelling Up strategy, led by
Labour political leader Cllr Ian Ward.
A shortage of social housing, families trapped in B&Bs, inequalities in health and wealth, high unemployment among young people, whole areas living shorter lives than more affluent neighbours and fly-tipping are among them.
These are issues that have blighted the city for years, worsened by a decade of cuts that has seen the city council’s budget slashed by £800 million and its workforce halved.
None of these troubles are news to Cadman, who says she is systematically going through services across the council to ensure it is in the best shape to confront them.
That includes visiting all parts of the city and meeting everyone from volunteers at local foodbanks to university vice principals and business execs.
Our meeting is squeezed between a visit to nuns at a community project in Lozells and a walkabout in Glebe Park with a local councillor.
“Years of austerity have meant we have not always been able to deliver the services in the way we want,” she says – but it’s vital still to get the basics right.
Waste collection touches on everyone in the city, and has been found wanting through strikes and disruption, with complaints daily about flytipped rubbish, missed collections and the state of the streets.
“We need to demonstrate to people we care,” she says. “So if we are called out to get rid of fly-tipping, let’s do that but let’s also jet wash the streets. I am challenging services to think differently about how they do things.”