Birmingham City Council

Fresh hope for a Greater Birmingham authority – but only if council leaders can agree

Manchester, Yorkshire, Newcastle and Liverpool in radical push to regional governance

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Published July 26, 2013, in WM2015


A little over two years ago the metropolitan councils of Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan formed the Greater Manchester combined local authority with powers to oversee transport, economic development and regeneration.

This was the first small but significant step towards regional governance since John Prescott’s ill-judged 2001 plan for regional assemblies, and there were many pundits ready to suggest that other conurbations across England and Wales would quickly follow Manchester’s example.

Certainly, the Greater Manchester authorities had already been working together for several years in a more informal organisation and were  in well equipped to formalise the arrangements.  It is true, however, that the case for combined authorities has been given a boost by the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships, which have been handed responsibility for delivering economic development across council borders through the Regional Growth Fund.

Guidance issued by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills refers specifically to the type of collective governance arrangements that LEP councils may wish to consider, including combined authorities, a joint leaders’ board or economic prosperity board.

As ever, the Government is making it clear that any move towards a combined authority must be locally driven. “We are not prescribing any fixed way of working”, the guidance notes.

This reluctance to require councils to form regional bodies means that it is

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Everything you need to know about LEPs, regional government and grand devolution promises

The eternal struggle between Whitehall control and local government shows no sign of ending any time soon

By:
Published July 25, 2013, in WM2015


It is almost 30 years since the West Midlands County Council disappeared along with the other English metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council, sacrificed on the altar of Thatcherite mistrust of local government.

Since then Governments of various political shades – Labour, Conservative and today’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition – have wrestled, most unconvincingly at times, with the pressing matter of what to do about regional administration.

Who in the West Midlands should take responsibility at a strategic level for planning, housing, economic development, transport and skills. And just as importantly, how much of the funding to deliver agreed priorities should be handed down by national government and what proportion should be generated locally? These are the issues that grind round and round in a never ending circle of indecision and unmet promises.

The matter of funding leads naturally to fundamental questions about democracy and accountability. If Whitehall sets the budgets and approves or disapproves of major capital projects, as has so often been the case since the 1980s, is there really any such thing as local decision making?

Who now remembers the early days of Tony Blair’s 1997-2001 government and the Your Region Your Choice debacle? This was John Prescott’s attempt to persuade the English regions that they really should have their own assemblies, just like Wales and Scotland.

Prescott and Blair chose the three regions where support for a directly elected assembly was thought to be the greatest – the North-east, North-west and Yorkshire and Humberside.

Tony Blair put it like this in an introduction to the regional government white paper: “This gives people

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Getting inside the brains of Birmingham city councillors: Dr Jung will see you now

Leadership skills to be assessed by psychometric personality testing

By:
Published July 24, 2013, in Politics


Carl Jung

A plucky band of Birmingham politicians are to submit themselves to personality tests first devised by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung in an effort to discover what makes them tick.

Volunteers on the city council are being sought to undertake psychometric testing that will profile their individual style, leadership characteristics, discover whether they are introvert or extrovert and assess how they approach complex problems.

The online sessions will cost the council £1,620 and are part of a new member development programme that could be extended to all 120 councillors if the pilot scheme is successful.

Those taking part must fill in a questionnaire based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was developed to measure psychological preferences in decision making.

Although the test was first used in the 1940s it was based on theories proposed at the beginning of the 20th century by Jung, who identified four principal psychological functions by which people experience the world: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking.

According to Jung, one of these four functions is dominant most of the time. It’s simply a matter of finding out whether

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What did he mean by that? Incendiary Majid Mahmood letter dissected

Social services 'meltdown' claim plus whistleblower allegations piles more pressure on beleaguered cabinet member Brigid Jones

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Published July 23, 2013, in Opinion


The incendiary note from Labour city councillor Majid Mahmood to his colleague and cabinet member Brigid Jones, claiming that Birmingham’s children’s social services are in “meltdown”, has prompted plenty of comment since the contents were revealed by Chamberlain News.

Mahmood’s letter, emailed to Cllr Jones and fellow councillors, is critical of the departure of Peter Duxbury, the former strategic director for children, young people and families, who left the council by mutual agreement last week after less than 15 months in the job.

In his letter, Cllr Mahmood very firmly defends Mr Duxbury and appears to put the blame for the inadequacy of children’s social services on to “dysfunctional” senior officers who still have their jobs.

This “cohort” of senior managers is incapable of delivering the type of changes envisaged by Mr Duxbury and the fear, according to Cllr Mahmood, is that things will go from bad to worse now that the strategic director has departed.

These claims would be extraordinary under any circumstances, but to be made days after the conclusion of difficult negotiations surrounding Mr Duxbury’s departure raises the ante substantially and makes the contents far more

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Children’s social services ‘in meltdown’, claims Labour city councillor

'Incompetent managers are incapable of delivering improvements'

By:
Published July 22, 2013, in Politics, Popular


Birmingham children’s social services are in “meltdown and at crisis point” following the departure of strategic director Peter Duxbury, a senior city councillor has warned.

Scrutiny committee chairman Majid Mahmood took the unusual step of writing publicly to children’s cabinet member Brigid Jones warning her that vulnerable young people were being placed at risk by incompetent managers who he believed were incapable of delivering improvements to the service.

Mr Duxbury left the city council last Friday by mutual agreement after 15 months in charge of Birmingham’s children’s social care and schools. He had failed to move failing services for children at risk out of government special measures, where they have been for four years.

In his letter, Cllr Mahmood also claimed that the children’s services department is operating in a “culture of secrecy, suppression of information and defensiveness”.

Cllr Mahmood’s outspoken comments expose concerns among Labour councillors that Birmingham’s social services debacle will rebound politically at next year’s civic elections.

There is a possibility that the government may remove control of children’s social care from the council and hand responsibility for delivering improvements to an independent trust, an outcome that would be an embarrassing blow for the city council.

The tone of the letter with its fierce criticism of council officers is likely to alarm council leader Sir Albert Bore, and it is likely that Cllr Mahmood will find himself having to account for his actions in a sticky meeting with the chief whip.

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