Birmingham coalition falls out over failed £46m fund for jobs
For almost the first time since Birmingham’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was formed in 2004, spats between the partners are moving from behind closed doors into the public eye, writes Public Affairs Correspondent Paul Dale.
The Liberal Democrat deputy leader of Birmingham City Council, Paul Tilsley, must have known that his latest appearance before the main scrutiny committee would not be an entirely comfortable affair, given the local authority’s parlous financial position.
But it wasn’t the future challenges of coping with unprecedented government spending cuts that members wanted to talk about.
They were more interested in extracting answers for past failures.
Among his main duties Coun Tilsley is responsible for managing the council’s overall performance and, through his chairmanship of the Be Birmingham strategic partnership which oversees the £150 million Working Neighbourhoods Fund.
WNF has been a running sore since its inception in April 2008, just as Birmingham’s already dire unemployment record was beginning to get even worse.
The Government has suggested the fund could be cut by £4.04 million in the city, although the council is believed to be considering a larger cut of £7 million.
Administration through Be Birmingham – a partnership consisting of the council, health trusts, police, other public bodies and the Chamber of Commerce – got off to a bad start. There was far too much in the way of lengthy discussions with partner organisations about what to do and how to divide the cake and not enough action, according to critics.
Most attention has been focused on the £46 million of WNF money targeted to tackle unemployment in the city’s poorest wards.
Earlier this month, Tory cabinet regeneration member Tim Huxtable reported that only 170 people had been helped into work in just over two years. That was against a target to find “sustainable long-term employment” for 5,000 people by the end of the three-year WNF in April 2011.
Huxtable pointed to problems with the council’s Constituency Employment and Skills Plans (CESPs) and Neighbourhood Employment and Skills Plans (NESPs), condemning long delays in letting contracts to the private sector firms bidding to carry out the job-creating and skills work.
He added: “It is clear, with the benefit of hindsight, that NESPs and CESPs have in general not provided good value for money, although some aspects of the programme have proved to be very successful in tackling worklessness within Birmingham.
“The design of NESPs and CESPs has proven bureaucratic, inflexible and does not suit the very different economic conditions which exist today compared to when they were originally conceived.”
His words were unusually frank and critical in the context of the more usual carefully coded public pronouncements between cabinet colleagues.
Coun Tilsley arrived at the scrutiny committee with the latest performance figures showing that 841 people have been helped into employment, but he got little in the way of thanks.
It seems unlikely that he was prepared for the blunt, some might say savage, criticism of WNF and Be Birmingham from Conservative councillors.
After explaining how difficult it was to give people who have been out of work for years skills to find jobs, Coun Tilsley invited comments and questions.
Edgbaston Tory councillor Deirdre Alden said, bluntly, that it would have been far better had the council spent the entire £46 million on building a factory. “At least we would then have somewhere where people could work and produce something,” she added.
She told Coun Tilsley: “I don’t think WNF is a very good story. I think our record is pretty appalling and Be Birmingham must take a lot of the blame for that.”
Fellow Edgbaston Tory councillor James Hutchings went further. He called for the abolition of Be Birmingham, which is run by 35 council officials. He said: “As far as Be Birmingham is concerned, it started off as a small organisation but now it is a bureaucratic monster.”
The deputy council leader also faced flak from within his own political party.
Sparkbrook councillor Jerry Evans, a long-standing critic of Be Birmingham, said 18 months had been wasted talking about what to do with WNF and the result was a “ludicrously inflexible” system that did not meet local community requirements.
Labour, meanwhile, claimed that the few jobs that have been created through WNF are unskilled and low-paid.
Coun Mike Leddy (Lab Brandwood) said the money would have been better used to build training centres where unemployed people could have learnt new skills and obtained qualifications in order to go out and find work.
Coun Tilsley hit back, insisting that “WNF figures are not as disastrous as you would like to suggest”.
He added: “Don’t forget we are dealing with people who are furthest away from the labour market. Really hard nuts to crack.
“These are people who have been excluded from economic activity, perhaps for all their life. It is a very difficult process to get someone who has never been employed to a state where they are fit to attend an interview and get a job. There are no quick fixes.”
He insisted there was no likelihood of Birmingham failing to spend its WNF allocation by the end of the three-year scheme.
“We have gone through all of the NESPs and CESPs contracts to see where contractors are under-performing. We are pulling money back and reallocating it to make sure it is spent. No money will be returned to the government,” Coun Tilsley said.
