The damning report into Liverpool Council “identified systematic, whole-council weaknesses” alongside its financial shortcomings.
As well as highlighting the “organisation-wide culture where people do not feel accountable for managing public money” government appointed commissioners at the Cunard Building have found serious gaps in Liverpool Council’s leadership, risk management, decision making and workforce capability. The four-strong team of Whitehall officials, to be joined by a fifth member responsible for finance, delivered their 26-page verdict on progress this morning.
Regarding the capability of the organisation, they said: “The challenge facing the Council is threefold: first, senior leaders must understand the scale of the challenge and prioritise resources to the gaps that are most acute; second, plans are required to recruit, train and retain staff to fill these gaps; and third, the provisions to manage and develop existing staff and resources must be improved to build capability alongside recruitment.” Plans to manage gaps existing across capacity have been inconsistent and “until recently, there has been no joined up cross-organisation thinking to address these issues in an efficient and cost-effective way.”
READ MORE: Government taking over all finance and governance powers at Liverpool Council
The report added: “Across key areas of the council, there are too many vacancies and too many people in temporary roles. Recruitment challenges are not unique to Liverpool Council, but more can be done to bring in new talent.
“Effective leadership of functions is essential to addressing capacity issues.” It said the governance and decision making functions still requires significant improvement and processes and culture for rigorous, transparent decision making are not in place.
The commissioners’ findings said the “weak culture” of forward planning in some parts of the council “must be addressed and led from the top” if changes were to be successfully implemented. In terms of risk management, Liverpool Council is not acting effectively, the commissioners said.
The management culture around risk was described as weak, which meant “unintended and avoidable risks are sometimes taken” and a “lack of maturity” around risk management meant officers and councillors are often not well supported. The report added: “The lack of awareness of risks has led to overly ambitious plans: for example, the improvement programme had not properly factored in capacity and capability risks.”
Liverpool Council’s lack of effective risk management has threatened the safety of some services according to the report, which cited the vacancy in the statutory position of independent chair of the adults Safeguarding Board since June last year.
It said: “Although some positive milestones have been achieved, the journey to many of them has been contested, challenging, and often required significant effort on behalf of the Commissioners to see through.”
If the council is to continue its improvement journey, the right senior team needs to be in place, with an agreed organisational restructure, the report said. “It has taken too long for the council to come forward with a credible set of proposals” for its senior structure and criticism was also levelled at the decision to allocate a “wide-ranging set” of responsibilities to former finance director Mel Creighton as deputy chief executive.
This move was “not thought through and was against the advice of Commissioners. Senior leaders require clarity of roles and expectations, and the blurring of responsibilities between the Deputy Chief Executive and the Chief Operating Officer has been unhelpful.”
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