BLOG | ‘We are now entering a new phase of the intervention’

The Commissioners appointed to Liverpool City Council following the Best Value Inspection are now entering their third year of intervention.

Here, the Commissioners team – led by Mike Cunningham with colleagues Joanna Killian, Neil Gibson, Deborah McLaughlin and Stephen Hughes – provide an update on their work with the Council and a new way for residents to follow the Council’s progress.

We are now entering a new phase of the intervention and are working closely with Liam Robinson, the new Council leader, and Andrew Lewis, the new Chief Executive, to ensure Liverpool City Council makes the required progress. We all share an understanding of what has been achieved to date and the scale of what remains to be done.

Commissioners have a dual role, to support the Council to improve, while holding leadership to account on the delivery of those improvements.

To enable us to monitor the Council’s improvements more closely, we have developed some key indicators of a stable Council. We will need to be satisfied that the Council is meeting these indicators, and that their improvement trajectory is well set, before we can recommend to the Secretary of State that Commissioners can step back.

The intervention will only end when Liverpool City Council has made the necessary improvements and Commissioners can be confident that we are leaving the Council in a position of stability. This could mean that the intervention concludes to its original timescale, or it could mean more time is needed; at this stage, it is too early to tell.

If, on the recommendation of Commissioners, the Secretary of State decides that continued intervention is required beyond June 2024, then we shall continue to work constructively with Council to make the necessary improvements.

We will be sending our next report to the Secretary of State in September. Between now and then, the Council still has a lot of improvements to make, but we have confidence in the new political leadership and senior leadership team, who we will support to grip the challenges ahead.

We trust the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive to be able to assess the progress of the Council accurately and drive forwards the improvements needed. We are working closely together in a spirit of joint enterprise.

We have constituted a new Board to monitor the Council’s progress. We will publish the minutes of every Board meeting, and the Commissioners’ indicators of stable Council, on the Council’s website. This will enable the residents of Liverpool to follow the progress the Council is making. They will be available for anyone to see from today at liverpool.gov.uk.

Mike Cunningham – Lead Commissioner