Liverpool City Council is failing to improve fast enough, prompting fears that the beleaguered authority will face further intervention.
In a report to a cabinet meeting this week the council admitted it was not improving at pace and the changes it has put in place have been inconsistent.
The city’s commissioners claim the council ‘continues to lack the capacity and capabilities to address the critical improvement plans – including the Finance Improvement Programme – and this is a fundamental problem’.
Services that have been flagged as not improving include finance, procurement and the running of council companies. There are also issues with the property improvement plan and the council’s management restructure.
According to the report, progress has stalled as the council tried to focus on too many priorities at once, and ‘the scale of improvement needed, across a wider range of functions and services, was greater than originally expected’.
Last week a memo to the levelling up secretary Michael Gove from the commissioners was leaked to the Liverpool Echo. It claimed the council was going ‘backwards, not forwards’. A full report has been sent to the secretary of state, and is due to be published next month.
It is a year after the Government sent commissioners following the arrest of the former Mayor on alleged bribery and witness intimidation charges. Joe Anderson denied any wrongdoing.
Finance director Mel Creighton left the council last month, following a botched energy contract renewal.
This article first appeared on themj.co.uk.
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