There is much relief among the leadership at Birmingham City Council that a Brummie business leader and big city Labour leader are on the improvement panel set to oversee the local authority in the wake of the Kerslake report.
Worries that Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles would send some politically motivated gung ho character to stride into town like a new sheriff in Dodge City to clean up the Council House have to some extent been allayed.
The appointment of Birmingham businessman John Crabtree OBE, a well-known and highly respected figure, to chair the board has been particularly welcomed.
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Also on the panel is Leeds Council leader Keith Wakefield, a man well-known to Birmingham leader Sir Albert Bore through their membership of the Core Cities Cabinet.
His selection makes sense as it is the 海角视频’s second largest local authority behind Birmingham. Mr Wakefield understands the challenges of running a huge city with a complex mix of cultures and communities and similar issues with high unemployment, deprivation and education attainment.
Mr Wakefield is also very familiar with the city having been taken into care and placed in a Birmingham orphanage as a young boy during the 1950s. He studied government at the University of Birmingham, and an MA in industrial relations at The University of Warwick. For a brief spell in the 1980s he was a lecturer at Solihull College.
I have heard, but have no official confirmation of this, that Sir Albert Bore enrolled Mr Wakefield into the Labour Party at this time – they certainly crossed paths during their early political careers. Like Birmingham City Council, his Leeds administration has placed tackling deprivation and protection of the vulnerable as the priority policy objectives.
Sources close to the Labour leadership say that Mr Wakefield is preferable to Sir Stephen Houghton, the Labour leader of Barnsley Council who worked with Sir Bob Kerslake on his damning report.
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They will be joined by experienced local government auditor Frances Done who, rumour has it, may be taking up a desk in the Council House.
There are worries this indicates a ‘hands-on’ approach to reform of the city council rather than the critical challenge approach taken by Children’s Commissioner Lord Norman Warner which is beginning to deliver results for the child protection services. A source said: “We don’t need a dictator coming in, what we need is someone to act as a sounding board.”
That issue aside, the make up of the board has to some extent lifted the fear the local authority would have an improvement board forced on it, designed to give Birmingham a regular kicking and generate headlines about the basket case Labour council in the run up to the general and local elections.
There are some who see the whole Kerslake agenda as a party politically motivated attack on Birmingham and a refusal to accept its problems are anything other than a result of brutal funding cuts – rather than the deep-seated issues like confused roles, organisational disobedience and patronising attitudes to outside agencies and organisations.
And there remain grumbles from all sides of the council chamber that backbenchers and others are being excluded from the improvement plan. The Labour group, opposition leaders and their groups will only be informed of the proposed plan of action at their regular meetings in the run up to the February 3 council meeting. They will only have a few days to comment on and influence it before it goes to the February cabinet meeting for approval.
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Meanwhile, Sir Albert Bore has this week expanded a working party set up to consider devolution for the Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield in the wake of the 10,000-name petition calling for a town council.
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With Kerslake’s conclusion that current devolution was ineffective ringing in their ears, the new committee will be looking at city-wide proposals and has been told to come up with proposals which would be developed and constitutional changes introduced at the council’s annual meeting in late May. The committee has been crawling along ever since the petition was presented in late 2013. Now it seems that Kerslake might finally have introduced a sense of urgency to procedings.
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With the election campaign well and truly under way it is no surprise that the printing presses of the West Midlands are busy churning out campaign pamphlets by the million.
Party activists have of course found the one of the best ways to avoid them being taken directly from the doormat to the bin is to make them useful to residents – perhaps by providing a list of helpful telephone numbers and emails which can be stuck to the fridge along with a constant reminder of who the local Conservative/Labour/Lib Dem/海角视频IP/Green/Monster Raving Loony candidate is.
Just such a leaflet, for Dr Luke Evans, Conservative candidate for the marginal Edgbaston seat, has found its way to my desk.
Among the numbers for useful services, such as ChildLine and Environmental Services, is a number for NHS Direct. The trouble is NHS Direct was closed in March last year – especially embarrassing as Dr Evans is a hard-working local GP.
I wonder how many more gaffes will make their way onto election material before May 7? As ever send your entries to....