How new Brighton and Hove Council chief wants to transform city (From The Argus)

How new Brighton and Hove Council chief wants to transform city

7:00am Friday 22nd January 2010

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After 100 days in charge, the new chief executive of Brighton and Hove City Council has revealed his hand.

In an insightful review of his new domain John Barradell has this week set out how he sees the future of the authority, in a report tellingly named "A Council The City Deserves".

A council the city deserves.pdf

It is a document which will have wide ramifications in Brighton and Hove.

The council is the biggest employer in the city, with almost 8,000 workers, as well as the main provider of the public services 250,000 residents count on each day.

Money

The proposals will almost certainly involve job cuts – but, as Mr Barradell admits, a reduction of staff would have been forced on the council in the next few years whatever happens.

Its grants from Government will be slashed by at least £45million over the next three years, as the state attempts to steady its spiralling financial deficit, and will almost certainly be hampered for a decade or more.

So the chief executive's reasoning takes the line that if major cuts have to be made then it would be better to totally restructure the council now, instead of forcing round after round of ad hoc cuts on individual departments – like those which almost led to an unpopular closure of the city's History Centre this year.

He is under no illusions that it will be easy to achieve, particularly for staff who have been in jobs for a decade or more and do not want this kind of change forced on them.

But he also acknowledges that the key issue for the council is not just surviving with less money but to also improve services, and the satisfaction of residents.

Reputation

His analysis in the report is impressively in tune with what many observers would have identified as the council's key faults, and its main challenges.

He is quick to get to the essential issue for the authority – that it repeatedly achieves high ratings from the Audit Commission for many of its services, and is well regarded among its contemporaries, yet its residents hold it in dim regard.

Even more frustrating for the authority is that its own poor reputation among the population is maintained despite the fact 86% of residents actually say they like their area itself as a place to live.

For Mr Barradell this situation is at the base of everything the council needs to do, and his approach to tackling it is refreshing.

In the report he explains that he does not want to improve the council's reputation through "spin" or "feeling good" but instead says: "Good reputations are built from within organisations and the people delivering services have a huge impact on service delivery, public satisfaction and, ultimately, our overall reputation."

Hence his masterplan involves changing the council's whole approach to what it does.

Transformation

In simple terms Mr Barradell's idea is to stop looking to simply provide services and to start focussing more on residents' needs and the best ways to meet them.

In the report he refers frequently to the importance of being fluid both with resources and in thinking and to constantly innovate to find the best possible solutions.

It is an aim few residents would object to, but of course the key will be in whether it can be delivered.

Mr Barradell believes many of the changes will not be noticed by the public, except in the sense they should find "front-line" services more effective.

The key transformations will be in the organisation of the council's resources, where departments and expertise will be shared, rather than operating aloof from each other.

That move could theoretically end situations where different departments have staff duplicating each other's work.

Instead of having directors to head each of the departments, a small team of senior managers will "commission" services from across the council to take on "tasks".

Concerns

The main worries about the changes, apart from the ominous job cuts, has come through the fear it will lead to privatisation.

Both Mr Barradell and the council's elected political leader, Conservative councillor Mary Mears, have pledged they do not want to see any of their services privatised, but that has not deterred concerns among the trade unions representing the workers or opposition councillors.

They have pointed to the examples of Essex County Council and Mr Barradell's former employers Westminster City Council, where similar restructuring has led to considerable sections of the council's work being contracted out to social care providers, for example.

As Liberal Democrat leader Paul Elgood points out, outsourcing of services has not always been successful in Brighton and Hove in the past - most notably when refuse collection contractors Sita were appointed then scrapped for poor performance.

Coun Elgood said: "In a way shaking up the council is a good idea, it's time for a change and it needs to be customer focussed, but our residents say we don't want to see further privatisation of services."

Mr Barradell's plans to finalise his proposals over the next nine months and implement them in the year to follow. It seems destined to be a turbulent time for the council's employees, and possibly for the wider public, but if it works as he plans, the publication of this document could be a key turning point for this city.

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