Clive Heaphy: Beyond 100 days – restructuring, rebuilding and section 24s

Construction work at Exchange Square, Birmingham – image by Tim Ellis, Flickr.

In May, Clive Heaphy described his first 100 days in charge of tackling the financial problems at Birmingham City Council. Here, he reflects on what has happened since.

My first 100 days at Birmingham were a whirlwind of meeting colleagues and stakeholders and understanding the complex web of organisations that exists in the UK’s second city.

The next 100 days have been about resolving many of the issues the authority faces and building on its many strengths.

Among my priorities was restructuring the finance team to ensure it operated in a more effective way and is equipped going forward with the skills and tools necessary to deliver a modern service in a very large and complex local authority.

Existing strengths included an excellent (and welcome) breadth and depth of technical skill and corporate knowledge.

But weaknesses were most evident in communication skills and business partnering, which was in need of redefinition and, frankly, a boost.

The city council has a wealth of colleagues with long experience. But the flip side of that benefit was a lack of freshness of ideas and experience of new ways of operating.

Rebuilding my senior team to get a better balance of freshness and experience was critical.

That involved creating the leadership – a clear vision, team engagement, strong messaging, motivation, can-do attitude, right-first-time approach.

That extends to directorates where the idea of finance just “doing the numbers” had to give way to an accountability model.

Finance’s role had to change into to holding the mirror up, providing support and insight and intelligence to help budget managers take ownership of their figures and use them to drive decision making.

Alongside that, developing a strong working relationship with the auditors was critical and closedown was an important period.

With over 10,000 cost centres and a large network of controlled and associated companies, Birmingham’s accounts are complex – but it was important to determine, quickly, the issues that really were important.

Section 24 – a blessing, not a curse

Birmingham has been in the press a great deal lately, and not always for the right reasons.

Receiving a section 24 notice (S24) is never pleasant news but I have tried to turn it into a positive.

A S24 is a powerful wake-up call  and in many ways it is helpful to a new S151 in reinforcing a clear message to members and officers alike that however tough the challenges, they must be resolved, not deferred.

A reliance on reserves to meet the gap between spending and income can never be right – doing so for a number of years embeds the practice into the authority’s cultural DNA.

I am a strong advocate of CIPFA’s work on developing a financial resilience index and see it as another weapon in my armoury.

If we are to survive and thrive as a sector, we need to be honest about our relative financial strengths and to learn from those who have developed innovative approaches to turning adversity into opportunity.

I understand some of the technical concerns but they can be overcome and the index can become the basis for asking questions and finding solutions.

And talking of CIPFA, Rob Whiteman joined us along with our new chief executive, Dawn Baxendale, for a great session with the council’s senior staff on “the challenges facing local government and the role of a modern finance function”. This was, as intended, very thought provoking and will have long term impacts.

Birmingham is also a city of great opportunity and working with the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has been a great add-on to my role with Birmingham as the accountable body and myself as company secretary.

When I look around the city at the amount of crane activity, housebuilding, HS2, HSBC’s arrival and so much more, I realise that bodies like the LEP, the West Midlands Combined Authority and the Chamber of Commerce play a critical local role.

Expanding my horizons to these and other partnerships has been a key facet of my work.

Commonwealth Games cost model

Finally, I can’t let the opportunity go by without mentioning the 2022 Commonwealth Games, set to be hosted in Birmingham.

The buzz in the city and the council is palpable and the entire region is aware of the sporting, cultural and business opportunities that will result from this – and, of course, the legacy which is so important.

So much of my time has been spent on the games and the challenges of creating a great two weeks and developing a cost model, with the Local Organising Committee, that makes the games more affordable in future years to enable other Commonwealth countries to be able to deliver it.

The challenges of getting this in place in four years rather than the normal seven are immense but the city and the region are up for that challenge.

People do keep asking how I still manage to keep a smile on my face, but the truth is, I am enjoying a great role in a great city and we are on a journey to turn the headlines into positive ones for the many things we do well (operational and financial management of our 62,500 housing stock is a prime example), and those that we will turn around.

It would make even Joseph Chamberlain, the great reformer and such an important figure in Birmingham, smile too.

Clive Heaphy is corporate director (chief finance officer/section 151 officer) at Birmingham City Council.