Government Commissioners have published their first formal report into Birmingham City Council, since their appointment last October. The report is clear on where blame lies for the crisis – which has seen residents hit with a double whammy of higher taxes for fewer services – commenting that “The state that BCC finds itself in is of its own making. All local authorities in the country are facing financial challenges but that does not explain or excuse Birmingham’s failure”
In a lengthy report, highlighting the breadth and depth of the failure, commissioners point to long-standing issues with leadership and governance which, despite repeated warnings dating back to the Lord Kerslake report a decade earlier, the Labour Council has refused to address. In their opening remarks, the Commissioners state that when they arrived in Birmingham, 6 months after the appointment of the new Council Leader John Cotton, the council “had neither begun the process of addressing these problems in a serious way or even properly acknowledge them.”
Along with concerns about a lack of urgency, members not taking an interest in the report they were presenting for decisions, and a lack of clarity on members’ interests and influence (including trade union relationships and sponsorship), the Commissioners point to a number of areas of weakness across the council, including siloed working, an over-reliance on agency and interims, and weak governance of procurement activity, all of which are areas Birmingham Local Conservatives have been calling for improvements in for a number of years, to drive out efficiency savings that could have avoided some of the worst of the cuts we are now seeing.
Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington), Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives, said:
The Commissioners report reflects arguments we have been making at every budget meeting and elsewhere for the last decade – including a need to address an over-reliance on agency and interim staff. We’ve also raised concerns since 2017 that there seemed to be no evidence of the Labour Administration making progress on first preventing new equal pay risks and then the much-needed action to remove equal pay issues, and again the Commissioners’ comments echo this.
Labour’s salami slicing has both driven services into the ground and failed to make the necessary savings or transform the council into a modern institution fit for purpose. This abject failure has been driven at every instance by the failure of the Labour Leadership in Birmingham.
Cllr Ewan Mackey (Con, Sutton Roughley), Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives said:
It’s damning that the political leadership has been squarely and unavoidably pointed at in this report as a direct cause of Birmingham’s fundamental problems. Birmingham City Council needs rapid modernisation to deliver the services that residents deserve. We put forward plans in our alternative budget which have delivered this change but – as the commissioners note – the Labour Administration refused to acknowledge the scale of the problem. This Labour Administration has overseen a collapse of the Council’s finances, a Council Housing crisis, the number of Council Houses meeting decent homes standard has collapsed from 99% in 2012 to 31% now, which has destroyed the health of many families, and the butchering of the Oracle system which effectively blinded the Council
Cllr Robert Alden added:
Ultimately the commissioners are echoing the comments from the Labour Party Campaign Improvement Board "There are fundamental cultural challenges spanning the Party and the political leadership at Birmingham City Council … there are long-standing and persistent issues in getting the basics right. Budget cuts and the size of the City are used as reasons to explain the situation however, this does not hold up to scrutiny". The Labour leadership need to finally accept their failure and start decisively acting to fix the Council's finances and improve services for residents.
