Minister announces plan for partial takeover of Liverpool council
Liverpool City Council #LiverpoolCityCouncil
Liverpool city council should be brought under the joint control of government commissioners in an unprecedented move after inspectors found multiple failures and a “serious breakdown of governance” at the local authority, the communities secretary has said.
Robert Jenrick said an emergency inspection had painted a “deeply concerning picture of mismanagement”, an “environment of intimidation” and a “dysfunctional culture” at one of the biggest councils in Britain.
Commissioners appointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government would be sent to “exercise certain and limited” functions of Liverpool city council for up to three years under a plan that will prove controversial just six weeks before the local elections.
It is thought to be the first time the Westminster government has directly intervened in the day-to-day running of a city the size of Liverpool and is politically incendiary because it is one of the staunchest Labour cities in Britain.
The region sends 14 Labour MPs to Westminster. A Liverpool seat last had a Conservative MP 38 years ago. The last Conservative councillor lost his seat 23 years ago.
Steve Reed, the shadow communities and local government secretary, said he accepted the report in full and that Labour supported the government’s plan to reform the council. He said the report had raised “grave and serious concerns” and “severe institutional weaknesses” at the Labour-run authority.
Jenrick’s decision followed a damning report into parts of the council by Max Caller, a local government consultant who carried out an emergency inspection on behalf of the government. The report was ordered after the arrests of five men, including the Labour mayor, Joe Anderson, last December.
Anderson was arrested as part of Merseyside police’s Operation Aloft, an ongoing investigation into building and development contracts in Liverpool that led to the arrests of 12 people. He denies all wrongdoing.
Jenrick said the report had identified multiple failures in its regeneration and planning department, including the “awarding of dubious contracts” and a “worrying lack of record keeping” in which some documents were dumped in skips and others created retrospectively.
He said: “As a whole, the report is unequivocal: Liverpool city council has failed in numerous respects to comply with its best value duties. It concludes that the council consistently failed to meet its statutory and managerial responsibilities and that the pervasive culture appeared to be rule avoidance.”
Jenrick said there had been a lack of scrutiny and a “continued failure to correctly value land and assets, meaning taxpayers frequently lost out”. “When selling land the report states that Liverpool city council’s best interests were not on the agenda,” he said.
The inspectors found an environment of intimidation in which “the only way to survive was to do what was requested without asking too many questions”, he told MPs.
Liverpool city council is expected to accept Jenrick’s proposals, meaning government commissioners would be drafted in imminently. The number of councillors in Liverpool will also be reduced from 90, 72 of whom represent Labour. The election cycle will also be changed, moving to whole-council elections every four years.
Dan Carden, the MP whose Liverpool Walton seat is the safest Labour constituency in the UK with a 75% majority, said the city needed to see “real change” and “robust safeguards to guarantee transparency and accountability”. However, he said residents were concerned the move represented a “takeover by Whitehall”.
Jenrick said the local elections would go ahead on 6 May and that those politicians would then inform government about the best steps forward for the council.
He said if the government did decide to appoint commissioners it would be to “stand behind” the elected representatives, “not to tell them what to do but to guide and support them”.
He added: “We have given them the authority to act, should they need to, given the seriousness of some of the allegations but it is not our hope or expectation that those powers would be exercised.”
Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said the city deserved a well-run council with “stronger, more transparent governance procedures”. She added: “I’m a very proud scouser but listening to the secretary of state read the contents of the very damning report makes me angry as it will the whole city when the report is made public.”
There was immediately pressure on some Labour councillors to resign. Richard Kemp, the Liberal Democrat councillor and candidate for mayor, called for the resignation of all councillors connected to its scandal-hit regeneration, planning and property departments.
He said: “This is a sad day for our city which the people of Liverpool do not deserve.”
Liverpool’s Labour mayor, Wendy Simon, and its chief executive, Tony Reeves, who joined the council in 2018 and is praised in the Caller report, said: “This is a difficult day for our organisation and we take the report findings extremely seriously.
“The inspector’s report has highlighted several failings, but there is a collective commitment from both councillors and officers to learn from these mistakes.
“We would like to reassure all residents and businesses that we will take action to address all of the issues highlighted. We know we need to rebuild your trust.”
Commissioners were sent in to take over the running of councils in Northampton in 2018, Rotherham in 2015 and Tower Hamlets in 2014 but none of them was on the scale of Liverpool, a city of half a million people.