HISTORICAL leadership and cultural failures are set to be improved as councillors admit responsibility for the council’s crisis.
Damning external reviews of the local authority revealed ‘serious’ financial, governance, and operational unprecedented challenges the council is trying to address via restructures and support from government.
Senior councillors agreed to set in stone the council’s 12 priorities in improving the leadership and culture within the local authority to ‘demonstrate’ to residents, staff, partners, and government that it is ‘capable’ and ‘committed’ to addressing these failures rapidly.
It also sets out how the council will ensure good level of governance in corporate leadership, sustainable financial investments, and rebalancing of the budget.
READ MORE: Slough refugee building's 'rusted' windows need repairing
Some of these aims include making decisions based on evidence and date and that professional advice is demonstrated, the council engages with the public and its partners in an open and transparent manner, lead members and senior officers will take joint responsibility, and the chief executive engage more with its workforce via walkabouts and a weekly blog.
It also plans to ‘strengthen’ scrutiny of the leadership proposals/decisions, improve accountability in the senior team, improve its staffing levels with a diverse workforce that reflects Slough’s diverse communities, and implement a massive overhaul to improve the council’s ‘old-fashioned’ IT and phone systems.
This is the first step to reset the council’s strategic aims on what the council will prioritise and what it will look like to deliver these objectives and best value.
Cllr Christine Hulme (Lab: Central), lead member for children’s services, said this essentially meant going through the council with a “fine toothed comb” and building it “from the bottom up.”
Speaking at a cabinet meeting council leader James Swindlehurst (Lab: Cippenham Green) said: “The scale of the corporate leadership failure in the town – the clue is in the word corporate and that means it involves members as heavily as the officer and professional failures that have gone.
“Clearly some of the issues around procedure and IT and a whole load of issues are more operational than political, but the one thing I can confidently say is that Slough Council has been Labour controlled for 36 out of the last 40 years and there is no scenario in which we as elected politicians from the Labour group aren’t responsible for what goes on in this town.”
He also said the failed restructure of the council left it with “a lot of technical competencies missing.”
The recovery plan is a ‘work in progress’ and is set to be fleshed out to find out where the council needs to make service improvements.
READ MORE: Slough fly-tippers charged £6,000 for dumping in Wexham
Gavin Jones, interim chief executive of the council, said learning from failures is “the heart” of the strategy in delivering the priorities.
The meeting took place on Tuesday, March 29.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here