Liverpool City Council change will not come overnight - commissioner

Mr Hughes warned that change would not "happen overnight" at Liverpool City Council

Change will not "happen overnight" at a troubled city council, a government-appointed commissioner has warned.

Stephen Hughes was appointed to oversee Liverpool City Council's finance department in November.

He joined four other commissioners, who were put in place in 2021 over what the government said was a "serious breakdown of governance".

Mr Hughes said from what he had seen, he believed change can happen, but it would be a "complex process".

The council has been seeking to improve since then-Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick brought the commissioners in in 2021.

In September, it appointed Theresa Grant as interim chief executive, following the resignation of Tony Reeves, but an investigation then found it had failed to act on 12 contracts across various services - which had expired or were close to doing so - and therefore best value had been "compromised".

Appointing Mr Hughes in November, Mr Jenrick's successor Michael Gove said he was "committed to helping Liverpool City Council come out of this intervention as a stronger organisation and that is why I am taking further steps to put the council on a firmer footing".

'Work and effort'

Mr Hughes told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the commissioners had been told by the council had given them "confidence that they are committed to making changes work, but the proof is in the eating in this instance".

"There is the makings of a very good budget process, they've been through a political filter, they're into a public consultation exercise, there's some work being done to work out how that's all going to be implemented, that's all very positive," he said.

"What we need to see is what comes out of the consultation, what decisions are made and what actions are implemented.

"That's the key challenge."

Mr Hughes, who officially took up his post on 8 November, warned that the challenge of turning such a complex organisation around was that it would not "happen overnight" and required "work and effort" to turn ideas into practical outcomes.

Mr Hughes said the commissioners expected to last the course of their three-year term and estimated the changes required would continue to be implemented once the intervention officially comes to a close in 18 months.

He said the authority's staff also knew the enormity of the challenge ahead, though there was "an issue about the culture of the organisation as a whole".

"Everyone I've talked to so far understands it," he said.

"I think the top management I've engaged with clearly understand the scale of the change."

He said there was also a problem with "the extent to which there's ownership at every level of those issues", but added that part of the improvement programme was "around that".