By the end of 2001, years of mismanagement and political instability had transformed the hung borough into a byword for municipal failure (see "The path to change", page 30). In January 2002, Audit Commission inspectors revealed the council – which has an annual budget of £400m and 11,500 staff – had reached meltdown. On the brink of insolvency, it had an overspend of £10m, weak leadership, with departments such as social services and housing being run as separate enclaves. It was threatened with government takeover.
But this August, Walsall won the inspectors' praise for slashing its overspend to £1.7m and building a general fund, made up of all income except its housing revenue account, of about £3m. The borough is still struggling to improve – the transfer of 23,000 homes in March to Walsall Housing Group has been dogged by problems – but the threat of intervention was lifted in August. The council, which has christened its recovery effort "Walsall Reloaded", is planning a £3.5m, mixed-use, canalside redevelopment and is in the top 15% of local authorities for processing planning applications.
John Gregory, the Audit Commission's relationship manager for the West Midlands, says: "Walsall's moved a long way in a short space of time, but still has much to do.
"By 2006 it should be unrecognisable from what it was."
Out with the old …
The first step in the process was to recruit new managers. The commission recommended a management change in June 2002, and chief executive Hardial Bhogal resigned the following month.
The council's three party leaders and the ODPM agreed an interim team of troubleshooters, led by Michael Frater, chief executive of Telford & Wrekin council. Frater's team and local councillors appointed Annie Shepherd, former executive director for social services and housing at Liverpool, chief executive in March this year.
Shepherd picked a new team in June. Out went the lumbering and narrowly focused empires, in came departments made up of related functions, such as health and social services. "A lot of large authorities have traditionally had fiefdoms – large service departments such as housing, education or social services – and each one linked to a powerful committee," explains Gregory. "Walsall has gone down a path followed by many of these authorities in setting up a directorate structure that helps with corporate and cross-working."
Upsetting the status quo was unpopular. Some staff left, although no official figures were published. But, faced with intervention, Walsall councillors had little choice. Now, the authority has six executive directors – the chief executive and five others – covering corporate affairs, social care and health, education, culture and leisure, regeneration and housing, and resources and performance.
Sonia Davidson-Grant is executive director of housing and regeneration. She says: "The advantages to having housing with regeneration is that you can't be successful if you don't look at them strategically. It's not just roads and houses, it's about transport. It's about someone saying, 'the difficulty of me staying here is that there are no jobs and no transport, so how do I get to the jobs?'"
Tom Ansell, Conservative group leader, adds: "Under the old system, if you wanted to know what was going on in a department, you'd have to find the chairman or look in an agenda." These days, the executive team has weekly meetings.
The next move was to try to stamp out bullying by some of the council's 60 elected members. Councillors, for example, had been known to intimidate officers over a policy – from rubbish collection times to planning applications – if they felt it was not sufficiently voter-friendly. Liberal Democrat group leader Ian Shires says: "With some members, the attitude was, 'the answer is no, what's the question?'"
The Improvement and Development Agency, the Institute of Local Government Studies at Birmingham University and consultant KPMG were hired to advise and train councillors on appropriate behaviour.
The three parties – Walsall has 27 Labour councillors, 26 Conservative and seven Liberal Democrat – also buried the ideological hatchet. For the first time, Labour members spoke at Tory and Lib Dem cabinet meetings, and vice versa. "The turning point was getting the political groups to take responsibility," says Gregory. However, the cultural shift is not a fait accompli: next year's local elections could see a return to political point scoring.
With an attitude of political conciliation in place, the next step was to draw up a blueprint for recovery. Senior officers and the three party leaders put together a 90-page document last summer. It highlighted 15 areas for action, from financial planning to better communication.
For Ansell, the importance of the masterplan is clear: "All partners in the council are on it, and if the council changes, the plan is still there."
But the biggest improvement by far has been financial. Last autumn, Walsall avoided insolvency with a package of cuts: shutting public toilets, cutting grants to community associations and reducing overtime payments to waste management staff. Almost overnight, the overspend shrank to £1.7m. This, combined with an 8% hike in Band D council tax bills to £923.55, means the general fund for 2002/3 should hit £3m.
The cuts were unpopular, as Sonia Davidson-Grant, executive director of housing and regeneration, acknowledges, "but we really need to focus on priorities," she says. "If you want to deliver, you have to have the courage to take difficult decisions."
On the waterfront
The most obvious symbol of Walsall's renaissance, the council hopes, will be its £3.5m, 6.9 ha waterside redevelopment. Alsop Architects was chosen in August to transform Walsall's canal basin into a version of Birmingham's bustling Brindley Place, a canalside development featuring bars and galleries. A shadow urban regeneration company is awaiting ODPM approval to spearhead the scheme.
The council estimates the URC will draw in £19m of public, private and European cash.
The council has also tried to improve its housing and schools by relinquishing control of services. It privatised its education service in a £100m deal with contractor Serco last December. To help meet the decent homes standard, it transferred 25,000 homes in a £6m deal in March: 2000 to Walsall Alliance of Tenant Management Organisations and the rest to Walsall Housing Group. Watmos outlined its repairs plan in August, promising new windows, doors and bathrooms by December 2005, but the other transfer has proven more problematic.
Intended to bring in £1bn of investment over the next 30 years, it has been fraught with delays and funding rows. In July, the Housing Corporation placed the group under supervision and appointed four people to its board. Last month, consultant Rodney Dykes took over as interim chief executive from Kelvin Stacey. But appointees remain tight-lipped while a strategy is thrashed out.
"The management changes every two minutes, so you never know who you're dealing with," claims Unison representative Bob Piper. "As far as Walsall's residual housing function goes, it spent a lot on consultants and it's not much different."
Walsall's supporters argue, however, that it is still early days. Davidson-Grant says: "Transfer has let us focus on our strategic housing function, on homelessness and the private rented sector. We're moving towards closer working between social services and housing, and we're looking at the 'one-stop shop' approach." In the private sector, for example, the council has done a condition survey revealing that 5000 homes are unfit for human habitation and is working on a strategy to be published by April 2004.
Critics say Walsall's recovery so far is a story of style over substance. Buried amid the plaudits in August's re-inspection report is a caveat: "Beyond the recovery plan, the council does not currently have its own corporate plan nor a vision setting out its main priorities and objectives."
"It's almost like they believe in a self-fulfilling prophecy," says Unison's Piper. "As long as they keep repeating the mantra that Walsall's improving, they think it will improve."
"Its action plans are incredibly demanding," agrees Gregory. "One thing that stands out from Walsall's experience is that it's painful, time-consuming and expensive to turn round an organisation of this size and complexity."
None of this, however, dampens the new regime's enthusiasm. "The government has its eye on us, they're just waiting for us to deliver," says Davidson-Grant. "It feels like a stage and the curtains are opening."
Source
Housing Today
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