Former senior partner at Wragges to chair Birmingham improvement panel

John Crabtree was senior partner of the law firm – now called Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co – between 1993 and 2004. He is also a former president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

Also named on the panel by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles are:

• Frances Done (vice chairman), a former chair of the Youth Justice Board whose career has spanned both public and private sectors, including a time as chief executive of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council;
• Keith Wakefield, Leader of Leeds City Council; and
• Steve Robinson, chief executive of Cheshire West and Chester Council.

The establishment of an independent improvement panel was one of the key recommendations of a review published last month by Sir Bob Kerslake, Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities & Local Government.

Eric Pickles, Communities Secretary, said: “The Kerslake report found a series of deep rooted and serious problems that are stopping both the city and the council from fulfilling their potential. It is essential now that the city council makes rapid progress if it is to serve the people and businesses of Birmingham as it should. I am confident the panel I have appointed will help achieve this.”

The panel is to oversee Birmingham’s implementation of an action plan to deliver the recommendations of the review.

The findings of the Kerslake review included that:

• The city council’s size acted as “both a badge and a barrier: it has led to a not invented here, silo based and council knows best culture”.
• The narrative within Birmingham and the council needed to become more positive, with the council too often seeing itself as a victim.
• There was a blurring of roles between members and officers.
• The current devolution arrangements within the city were confused and very few people understood them.
• The council’s vision for the future of the city was neither broadly shared nor understood by the council’s officers, partners or residents. Instead there was a multiplicity of strategies, plans and performance management processes which lead to unnecessary complexity and confusion and were not followed through to delivery.
• The chief executive and corporate leadership team lacked the corporate support and capacity that was needed to undertake their role effectively.
• Neither the savings nor the staff reductions the council had made had been underpinned by a long-term strategic plan for the nature and shape of the future council and the people it needed.
• The council faced very significant budget difficulties in the next few years and did not yet have credible plans to meet these.
• Performance management was ineffective and not up to the scale of the task.
• The council, members and officers had too often failed to tackle difficult issues. 

The appointments were agreed by Birmingham, which had initially expressed reservations about the extra work a panel would create and said "a further prescriptive intervention of the kind outlined may not be wholly helpful".

Reacting to today's announcement, Sir Albert Bore, leader of the council, said: “We have now had time to reflect on the report and begun to take steps to address the issues identified. We are producing a comprehensive improvement plan, working across the political spectrum and with our external partners."