Liverpool Council is facing a “really challenging” budget with “substantial” savings having to be found according to its interim chief executive.
As the local authority publishes its proposals to plug the £73m funding gap it faces for the next financial year, Theresa Grant said a “transformation and modernisation” was needed at the Cunard Building to deliver efficient public services. Ms Grant, who only took up her role in September and will be in post until May, said the council needed to be “fit for purpose” quickly.
She said: “What you’ll see in the budget is around balancing it basically, but for me that’s not the entirety of what we need to do and where we need to be. We’re very clear that residents are asking us for better services and to be better value for money so we need a transformation of the organisation and a modernisation.
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“That’s not about next year’s budget as such, what we’ve tried to do in the short time we’ve had is build in an element of that into the budget and we’ll continue to do that. By February we’ll see more transformation and it’ll give us a twofold benefit; it will reduce the impact on staff, it will improve how we deliver services, and I think ultimately it’ll put us on a sound footing for the next two years.”
Ms Grant came in to the council following the resignation of previous top officer Tony Reeves amid the fall out from the second commissioners’ report published in June. She said that progress was continuing to be made that would help future budget setting processes.
She said: “We had started the journey before I arrived and I’ve accelerated that at pace which the organisation has responded really well to. We’ll be looking to bring in support and resource around that and we’ll be able to move a lot quicker and help us to deliver more savings and there’ll be a lot less impact on the organisation.
“What you will see is services delivered in a different way and that’s what transformation is about, while making sure that residents still get the services they need, more efficiently and with better value. We’re not a standard business as usual council at the moment, but we need to get there and we need to get there pretty rapidly and we need to be fit for purpose and when we are we’ll no longer need an intervention.
“The fact we’ve had to balance a really challenging budget for next year is not helping the rest of the journey in that sense.”
The former Northamptonshire County Council boss said the government appointed commissioners overseeing the city had not been a malign presence during the difficult financial planning process. She added: “They’ve been very clear we’ve got the legal requirement to balance the budget. They’ve not used their powers in anyway and have been really supportive in us trying to achieve such a major challenge for this organisation because it’s already quite lean, so the millions for next year are already substantial for an organisation that’s lean.
“We’ve got a new finance commissioner who has been supportive as he’s come in at the end of the process.”
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