Birmingham can be great again, commissioner says

Birmingham's Lead Commissioner Max Caller was appointed after the council declared effective bankruptcy last year

The man appointed to oversee Birmingham City Council’s recovery has said opportunities were missed to avoid financial crisis.

Speaking to the council’s scrutiny committee on Tuesday, Lead Commissioner Max Caller said he believed the council could be “great again”.

Mr Caller was appointed by central government after the council declared effective bankruptcy last year.

It needs to find £300m of savings over the next two years and also faces bills of about £1bn to deal with equal pay claims and the implementation of an IT and finance system known as Oracle.

Mr Caller told a meeting: “This was a great council and you can be again"

Addressing councillors, Mr Caller said: “What has happened in Birmingham is that you have really lost your way from being one of the best councils in the country to getting into intervention."

He added: “It has felt as though the council felt that it was too big to listen to other people, that it knew better.”

Mr Caller also recommended that the council appointed an independent local business leader to oversee audits of its budget - noting that if the authority “was a FTSE company, you would be in the top 100.”

He also said it was a major achievement getting the recent budget plans signed off “however unpalatable they were to you and the public.”

Offering some hope for the future, Mr Caller said: “This was a great council and you can be again. You need to be again. Because your citizens, and local government, needs you to get it right.”