Government hits Yorkshire council with best value notice, requires appointment of independent advisory panel

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has today (29 February) issued City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council with a non-statutory Best Value Notice.

In a letter to council chief executive Dr Lorraine O’Donnell, Deputy Director, Local Government Finance Suzanne Clarke said the Department acknowledged the steps the council had taken to identify the serious issues it faces.

However, DLUHC remains concerned at Bradford’s capacity to comply with its Best Value Duty under the Local Government Act 1999.

The notice issued to Bradford is a non-statutory best value notice issued outside of S230 of the Local Government Act 1972.

Clarke said the Department was issuing the notice following:

• Serious concerns highlighted by a review of the council, undertaken by CIPFA and reported in November 2023, around financial resilience, and control.
• Concerns relating to capacity to transform both the local authority and Bradford Children and Families Trust (“the Trust”) services at sufficient pace to ensure they can tackle the issues they face.
• The CIPFA review’s requirement for greater assurance regarding effective working relationships, particularly between the council and the Trust.

Clarke wrote that a failure to deliver the level of change required at sufficient pace would be “very concerning”. She therefore set out the Department’s expectations of Bradford in providing assurance of progress. “Ministers have been clear that there can be no scope for poor working relationships between Bradford Council and the BCFT," she said.

Amongst the steps DLUHC expects are:

• The establishment of an independent advisory panel that has expertise in finance and children’s services
• The advisory panel will “as a minimum”: review the authority’s governance framework to ensure it holds leaders to account for performance against budgets; review that the authority and the Trust have established full and effective lines of sight across all areas of spend; ensure that the local authority has a coherent risk management strategy, policy, and approach across the total organisation and with stakeholders and partners; support the council to broker effective working relationships between the leaders of the authority and the Trust, “establishing a shared vision, objectives, and an effective framework for good governance between the trust and council”; and provide targeted support to Bradford’s Chief Executive Officer and other statutory officers where they require it.
• Consideration of whether to make the current children’s commissioner part of the advisory panel.

It also tells the council to consider the opportunity to draw in specific expertise in procurement, HR, contract management and wider corporate services to the panel to support the authority’s capacity.

Clarke calls on Bradford, with the support of the improvement panel, to produce an improvement and transformation plan that is focused on delivering the council’s key objectives and securing the medium-term financial position. The plan should also implement the recommendations from the CIPFA review.

The Best Value Notice will remain in place for 12 months, after which time, should the Department deem it necessary to continue to seek assurance through such a Notice, it will be reissued. The notice may be withdrawn or escalated at any point based on the available evidence, Clarke added.

Alongside the Best Value Notice, Bradford Council received a letter regarding the authority’s request for exceptional financial support (EFS) in respect of the financial years 2023 24 and 2024-25. The support will amount to £80m in 2023-24, and £140m in 2024-25.

Responding to the Best Value Notice and the response to its EFS request, Bradford said it meant it would now be able to present balanced budgets for council approval for both these years.

“The council has had to deal with a number of very financially challenging circumstances as a result of inflationary pressures and significant increases in demand for children’s and adult social care,” it said.

The council said improvements in financial governance had already been delivered and the chief executive, who took up post in October 2023, had put in place an emergency budget response team to identify savings, stronger oversight of spending, and is enhancing the transformation programme.

There had also been much closer working with the Trust, working together to improve services and reduce costs, it said.

Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe, Leader of Bradford Council, said: "I welcome this news. It gives the council the stability our district needs and means we will be able to present a balanced budget this year and next. However, this is not free money, it has to be paid back. And like all councils, we still face extremely challenging financial headwinds over the next few years, primarily due to rising demand in social care. The difficult decisions have not gone away.

“This news does mean, however, that we will be able to put in place our five-year plan to make the council financially sustainable. This plan needs to be delivered quickly and, as set out in the recent budget reports, includes tackling the structural budget gap, refreshing the council’s culture and investing in the corporate services needed to deliver change.

“The council has been working extremely hard to tackle the difficult financial challenges we face. It’s good that the CIPFA review, carried out last summer, has now been published by Government.  We welcome external challenge to help us keep on track. The Bradford Children’s and Families Trust is making good progress under the leadership of the Trust Board and Charlotte Ramsden, the Chief Executive.

“A condition of the Exceptional Financial Support is that we will be setting up an Improvement Board. The council’s Chief Executive Lorraine O’Donnell is already working closely with the Government to deliver the recommendations we all want to see so that the council can move on to a secure financial footing.”

Eileen Milner, Chair of Bradford Children and Families Trust, said: "This is positive news for both the council and the Trust, although we acknowledge that there are many challenges ahead. The Trust is a new organisation, but we have a clear plan in place to continue to make improvements in the services we provide for children and families in Bradford and, as we do so, to continue to drive down costs. The work of the last eleven months is already demonstrating good progress.

 "We are committed to continuing to work in partnership with colleagues in the council and with partners in both the DfE and DLUHC. Collectively we all acknowledge our duty to deliver safe, effective and efficient social care services for the children and young people of Bradford and District."