Things get worse when I suggest that her views on local authorities sound a lot like Liberal Democrat policy. "Hardly," retorts de Groot, and proceeds to outline her five-year vision for councils. "I'd like local government to have a reputation much higher than it currently has.
"When people talk about public services, they see individual services: housing, education, schools, crime, health. But local government is at the heart of those issues and debates.
"I want us to be seen as serious players in the public service world. This would be reflected in public perception and how we are seen by central government.
"Five years down the track, I'd also like to think we'll have a much stronger local democratic base, that being a councillor will be something to be respected, that councillors will feel valued."
This may seem a tall order. But in 52-year-old de Groot, councils have a Whitehall big hitter on their side – "the feisty lady sweeping in from the Treasury" as one housing director calls her.She has recently hired almost 100 strategic advisers across education and social services, as well as setting up a new network of regional advisers.
De Groot wants to use the agency's £20m annual budget to "add a sense of urgency" to its existing work – such as the IDeA Beacon awards scheme – while spreading the benefits much wider to achieve her ambitious plan. She feels the foundations are in place, but wants to expand some of the partnership programmes between councils working in areas such as neighbourhood renewal, as this will quickly "drive up standards".
The road to IDeA
De Groot took up the IDeA job in September, after three years as the Treasury's director of public services. One former colleague says: "She is sorely missed. She brought her fantastic breadth of knowledge to bear upon all aspects of our work. Her time in the local authority world helped us to think across various agendas."
Before the Treasury, de Groot spent a year as associate director of the Audit Commission's best value inspectorate and five years as chief executive of Bristol council. And when we discuss her first job, as a community worker for Holloway Tenants' Co-operative in north London in the 1970s, there's a glimpse of the human being behind the tough exterior. "I was a competent, but not brilliant, community worker," she admits. "I learned an enormous amount.
"I believe in being aspirational, that both people and organisations can be better. For example, inspiring somebody whose own opportunities have not been that great – I really enjoyed that about my time at the Holloway co-op."
Her predecessor at IDeA, Steve Bundred, left after just six months to become chief executive of the Audit Commission. De Groot promises to "stay slightly longer than Steve" – when they hear what she plans to do, councils will hope she does that and more.
De Groot believes the best way for councils to improve their services is for them to have more power. She passionately supports the localism doctrine propounded by the 22 authorities that make up the IDeA-led Innovation Forum, all of them classed as "excellent" by the commission.
Social housing is seen more and more as welfare housing. There are other ways to get decent housing than having to buy
Lucy De Groot
"It isn't just about local government," she says. "It's about how local government interfaces with health and other agencies and, in the case of housing, the relationship between providers and the council. There should be a basis for locally-determined management and governance arrangements relevant to communities. We should move away from nationally-determined policies that can't be bent to fit the needs of different parts of the country."
The American way
This isn't just her new job talking. While still at the Treasury, de Groot visited the USA and was impressed by how some city authorities harnessed local knowledge to improve their communities. "I went to three cities: New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia. The last two have a massive abandonment problem. But they've got a more strategic approach to dealing with it in terms of housing and the economy. They look at it city-wide.
There are drug problems, poor education and health – all that kind of stuff.
"I met people looking at the whole economic balance of American cities, trying to sense where they could intervene at the level of local neighbourhood housing markets to stop them going into decline.
"When the first house gets abandoned, you need immediately to move in, ensure it gets boarded up and start the compulsory purchase order process. The minute someone starts using the street corner for nefarious activities, you take action. You use local intelligence to do this. In the UK this is what we have in local authorities, but we don't use them like that."
She constantly links housing and the economy – much in the manner of junior housing minister and former financial journalist Yvette Cooper. She is also a devotee of the Communities Plan.
But she is no on-message Blairite: warming to her theme of what should be done to empower communities, de Groot turns her guns to the government's drive to help more low-paid people become homeowners. "We have a very skewed tenure picture in this country, with an increasing sense that social housing is seen more and more as welfare housing.
"This is happening just at the time when analysis shows the worst thing you can do is have communities that are essentially welfare ghettos. There are other ways to have decent, secure housing than having to buy."
She hopes the Treasury-led review into the housing shortage that's being compiled by economist Kate Barker will allow people to make more rational choices when it comes to where they want to live.
This is the essence of the job for de Groot – turning political theory into practice. Breaking into a smile, she returns to her time at the tenants' co-op, with a disarmingly frank anecdote. "One of the most powerful lessons was when someone else took my job as a community worker. He had been the chair of the co-op, he'd been a tenant and he was just much better at it than me. He had enormous patience and fantastic interpersonal skills. He was a postman – I was just a smart girl from university.
"Actually knowing what you're good at and what other people are good at is really important. Being conscious of your strengths and weaknesses and not being threatened by that is quite important."
Source
Housing Today
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